The first time I broke my arm, Josh (who pushed me) visited me in the hospital a day or so after I was admitted. He was very shy, very apologetic, and hid behind his mother most of the time. I think it was she that baked the cookies for me that I seem to remember receiving, though don’t remember eating. It doesn’t seem like something that I would have been allowed to have by either my mom or the doctor… a full plate of cookies all to myself? I think not. Most likely, I ate one while they were there and never saw the rest of them.
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This is not the point.
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Besides the cookies, the Caddels (because that’s what they were called) also brought me a game to play while I convalesced. It wasn’t electronic (that not being important at the time), and only required one hand to use effectively; which, even at seven or eight I found profoundly considerate. It was a Pac-Man game, who’s object was basically the same as the simple cup-n-ball games, in that you try and scoop a ball on a string into a cup. This game was almost the same thing except the cup was an open-mouthed Pac-Man and the ball was… well it was still a ball, but you were to agree that it was actually a “pellet” like from the video game. Instead of the pellet being on a string, though, the whole thing was encased in a clear plastic sphere with the Pac-Man suspended in the center. By means of a handle, you would manipulate the sphere around, causing the pellet to spin within it; and, try to time everything exactly, so that when gravity eventually took over, the pellet would drop into the waiting mouth of Pac-Man.I loved this game.
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It made a particular sound as the ball would spin around inside the sphere that must have driven my parents crazy… not to mention the loud clack-clacking of hard plastic on plastic every time I missed the mouth. Sometimes I would turn the sphere in small tight circles just to make the pellet whir around the sphere as fast as possible, with no attention paid to the Pac-Man in the middle, producing a constant zimming sound that I can still hear.
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I remember that game very well, and probably still have it in a box somewhere, buried along with my Star Wars figures and several small rocks that for me held a value I would no longer understand.
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What I don’t remember, is ever actually getting the pellet into the mouth. Not that I didn’t. I am sure (or at least assume I am sure) I did hundreds of times; it’s rather that the most important part to my memory was the playing of the game, as opposed to the winning of it.
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This was the point.