Pac-Man

I recently had the misfortune of having both of my sons scheduled to go to the orthodontist at 3:45 pm. Perhaps, like me when I scheduled the appointments, you’re wondering what is so bad about that. It’s obvious if you think about it.

You see, 3:45 is late enough in the afternoon that every school in the county is already out, every high school, middle school, and elementary school. It’s even late enough that plenty of kids have already finished their extracurricular activities, making 3:45 the perfect time to schedule an orthodontist visit.

It was a total madhouse.

My first inkling that something was wrong came as I pulled into the parking lot. It was nearly full with precisely one spot left. On the one hand, I was immensely grateful for the one spot. But on the other hand, parking isn’t necessarily my strong suit. I can do it…but I just prefer to have options of how and where to do it, preferably an option that includes having empty spaces on either side of me. Just in case.

But there was one sole spot left that day, and it was surrounded on either side by a minivan and an SUV. Stupid moms and their stupidly big vehicles, I muttered to myself, as I slowly maneuvered my Honda Pilot between the lines.

Having successfully parked, we made our way inside, only to find there was no seating left in the waiting room. I suppose technically, there were a few seats here or there, but we’d have to split up and sit separately, directly next to some stranger, which much like parking, I always prefer to have some empty chairs on either side of me. Just in case.

Luckily, our orthodontist’s office is equipped with a little video arcade room with old-timey arcade games. We usually don’t partake in the arcade, because we all have phones that are loaded with games that are much more recent, plus videos, music, emails, social media, books, and anything else you might possibly need for entertainment.

But that day, the arcade was nearly empty, so we went for it. At first, we played Super Mario Bros 3, which I believe to be one of the most brilliant video games of all time, second only to Donkey Kong Country 3. But whenever I play those games that I played as a child, I rely a lot on muscle memory and if it’s on an arcade machine, then the controls are too different and I make foolish mistakes, like letting a Goomba kill me or letting my red mushroom fall down a hole. (I didn’t go running in after it, but I kinda felt like it.)

So after a while, we switched to Pac-Man. Now, Pac-Man has never been my favorite game. I never had much chance to play it, and whenever I did get the chance, I never won because there were always those ghosts chasing me down and trying to kill me.

I always thought that the secret to Pac-Man was to use the bigger dots to turn all the ghosts blue and eat them all and then, while they regenerate, I could freely eat everything else and win the level.

But that day, at the orthodontist’s office at 3:45, I’m happy to say, I finally understood Pac-Man.

The goal is to eat the dots, not the ghosts. Evade the ghosts, eat them if the opportunity arises, but focus on eating the dots. And once I started playing like that, I was not so bad at the game and made it through many levels.

And then I started thinking about life. In life, there are always enemies and things out to get you. Troubles and difficulties and things that you think, well, if I could just fix this situation or get rid of that condition, then I could really live properly and get things done.

But we’re not meant to put all our energy and effort into fighting enemies. We’re meant to go about our work of eating the dots as best we can while dodging ghosts in an imperfect world.

So whatever it is you’ve been put on the Earth to do, go do it, even if you have five ghosts trailing after you. And always schedule the orthodontist during school hours.