In the air tonight

Sense memories. We all have them. Or at least I’m assuming we all have them. Little moments when something innocuous -a smell or a feeling, perhaps- brings back a very specific memory. Being such a nostalgic person, I tend to get them all the time. But never quite in the same frequency as I do in December.

It’s not often big or particularly affecting memories that are triggered, either. It’s usually just little things. When I’m sitting around and I feel a rush of cold air from somebody coming into the house, for example, I’m brought back immediately to my early teenage years. I can picture myself in the basement of my parents’ house, playing video games on the little TV designated for video games, while the main TV played on the background, filling the room with the sounds of sitcom Christmas episodes.

Then my parents come in. If they were doing normal shopping, they just bring in their purchases (probably groceries) as usual. If they were doing Christmas shopping, my mother will come in first and announce that everybody had better stay where they are and away from the door (usually followed by me running straight towards the door, for the sake of being a nuisance). A few moments later, the cold air from the outside will make its way down to me. I never thought that little chill would leave such a defined mark on me, but it did. It’s funny how humans work.

While the SNES was hooked up to that little video games TV for many years, it’s always the N64 in my memory, and usually I’ve got a rented game in there. Gex 64: Enter the Gecko and Winback are the ones that figure most prominently into this memory (placing it in 1999), but Super Mario 64 shares a similar mindspace. In fact, this very memory recalls when I beat it for the very first time. Perhaps that’s just another reason why it remains my favourite video game of all time.

If you hadn’t connected the dots yet, it is this very memory that led to the Year of Nintendo 64. In a fit of irony, I didn’t play any of the games mentioned above this year. Okay, I did play the DS port of Super Mario 64, but it’s got a whole different feel to it. Not nearly as nostalgic as the original. Gex didn’t make the cut because I bought the Playstation version of Enter the Gecko on my PSP a couple years ago and found out that it didn’t age terribly well. Winback… I do really want to play Winback again, but it’s so ingrained in that one part of my memory that I don’t think I could appreciate it in any other setting.

Anyway, that’s more or less all that I wanted to share today. Hooray for posts about weird things going on in my head! I often write these posts and then wonder if even a single other person in the world would have a damn clue what I’m talking about. I guess it doesn’t really matter.

Oh yeah, and that was about the most Christmassy thing that going to be happening on TE this year. So have yourselves a merry little Christmas, or a happy little whatever else you might be celebrating. Have a good time, is what I’m saying.

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