PVDD and The Kid were playing MarioKart this weekend. If you don’t know what MarioKart is, it’s an old school Nintendo game where you pick a driver, like Yoshi or Mario or Luigi, and then you race at breakneck speeds through these really wierd race tracks. You can spit out banana peels and turtle shells and the people behind you so they crash and stuff too.

At any rate, there’s this part where if your fellow racer is small (as opposed to big size) you can run over them and they’re squished as flat as a pancake. It’s extra funny when you and your opponent are both small and then collide and you are both squished flat.

Anyway, that’s how I feel today. Squished flat. I am not feeling very strong or brave at all.

The thing is, though, is that usually I will look to other people’s stories and anecdotes of things they have accomplished or overcome in their lives, to kind of give me inspiration and put things in perspective. Today I realized that it’s a little disconcerting and even a little neat, when I can look to my own story for inspiration. When I start thinking about stuff like PK and the Great Escape From ShitFuckTown, I realize that no matter how many lawyers I had to talk to today, or how many personal issues I have right now, that I have been through worse. And more than that, I have been through worse and survived. I’m still here. In one piece, more or less.

I think I have spent a lot of time lately forgetting where I came from. I have been worrying about where I am and where I’m going and whether I have the strength to get there, and completely forgetting the strength that got me here. I mean, short of getting squished flat by a semi while in small mode (except in real life), there’s not much that can happen to me that I can’t get over. Eventually.

There’s a lot of satisfaction in that. Even when things look pretty dark, there’s still that bit where I remember that life is like a video game. Even if I get squished flat, I will still pop back up to big size eventually. Even if I skid out on a banana peel or get knocked silly by a turtle shell along the way.