I’m going to tell you about one of my longest friendships. This is a friend who has seen me through grade school, college, grad school, and into adulthood. This is a friend that has stood by me while others in my life, some fairly major friends and family, have come and gone. He’s cheered me up while I was down and rewarded me at my most successful… and he doesn’t really exist.
Well, he doesn’t exist in the way we think about our usual friends. You know, the friends who have their own, real lives and who are usually there for you but sometimes they’re not. No. This isn’t one of those friends. This friend has always been there. And I’m writing this to tell you about the time I needed him the most.
You know my friend. If you’re reading this, on a site called Geekscape, then you self-identify in much the same way I do, so you might just be a friend of his as well. His name is Mario Mario and he’s the world’s most popular video game plumber (and that is his full official name). We’ve been good friends for quite a long time. Well, 30 years by the official count last weekend.
Yes, last weekend Mario turned an official 30 years old. I celebrated, like some of you did, by picking up his newest game Super Mario Maker. I also grabbed some (okay, I’ll admit it, all) of the new amiibo figures that accompanied Mario’s weekend celebration. The writers on the site shared their favorite Mario memories in a piece last Saturday. It was quite the investment, more than I’ve given other, REAL people in my life.
Waiting in line last weekend with Geekscape writers Josh Jackson, Megan Haley and Matt Rodriguez!
But I’m 36 years old. How is this friendship with a video game plumber even still acceptable? Almost everyone roasting themselves to stand in line under the scorching Southern California sun last Friday was also in their 30s or mid to late 20s. You probably are as well. Let’s be clear on something: these are toys and video games that society at large deems “children’s things”.
We all have our reasons. After a week of thinking it over for myself, and getting to the core of my lifelong relationship with Mario that I have mine; the origin story to a bond forged at a young age. I’ll admit that every time I’m drawn to buying another Mario anything I do think about why I do it. I imagine that all of us grown up geeks think about just what it is about Mario (or Spider-Man or Luke Skywalker or any of our fictional friends) that a 36 year old still sees as valuable in their adult life? Beyond the temporary fun and excitement of reading or watching or playing through the latest stories alongside them, what do these characters give us to the point of returning to them time and time again, dollar over dollar?
They give us stability. In a world where we can lose our jobs, lose our homes, our family members or our friends, these characters and stories prop us up against the face of this constant instability. Life throws us a relentless series of unknowns, and we wake up knowing this every single day. This fear can paralyze us and keep us from doing everything from meeting people to following our dreams. It’s the source of our greatest insecurities. And we live with the promise that it will rear its head every single day.
I remember, or at least I’ve romanticized over the past few decades, the moment I learned my parents were getting a divorce. I’ve thought about it a lot this past week. I was in the 4th Grade and my father was getting a new place to live. My brothers and I were sitting around the table at dinner and the news was broken to us in the clearest, most adult way possible. But this didn’t help my head from spinning. It didn’t help my appetite from turning to sickness. And it definitely didn’t help me understand the calmly stated impossibilities that I was hearing.
The walls of my childhood home exploding. I remember the aftermath as a series of images. My father’s new home, with new beds and silverware for weekend TV dinners in front of a rented VHS movie with my brothers. Comparing the weekend neighborhood kids to the old neighborhood kids. And I remember the feeling I would get walking through my parent’s old bedroom, now only occupied by my mother. I vividly saw the ghosts of that room, where my brothers and I unboxed our first NES system one Christmas morning and played Super Mario Bros., wildly swinging our arms to the left and right as we learned to use the controller. It was no longer a happy place in my life and the loss of that feeling stayed with me for a very long time.
That year for my birthday, I asked my father for a Mario doll. It was THE thing that I wanted that year and it could not wait for Christmas a few weeks later. I remember the way that my collected friends and brightly lit birthday table dimmed and muted away as I unwrapped that stuffed Mario doll. Looking back on those moments this past week, I realize that my young self, unable to reconstruct his family, had looked to that doll as something that would give him strength and security. It could return him to that perfect Christmas morning when he unpacked his original NES with his two brothers and swung his arms all over.
My Mario doll was a bulbous-nosed, blue and red suspender wearing totem and I needed it, probably more than any of the other comics, toys and games I’ve purchased in my life since. That was the first time that the world had turned drastically in a direction that I had not been prepared for and that doll was my only constant in keeping it from spinning me off into space.
This is a picture of the Mario doll in question, taken from Google. My actual doll sits packed somewhere in my father’s house to this day.
I carried that Mario doll with me everywhere that I went for the better part of a year.
Was I asked to leave it behind sometimes? Yes. Was I ridiculed for it by the other kids at school, most of whom had started getting into other interests like sports and dances? Probably. Was I going to let that Mario doll out of my sight? Not a chance.
Eventually, the world stopped spinning. Over time, I moved on to the next grade and to thinking about things like playing sports and dances. But did I leave Mario behind? Obviously, I didn’t. In some form or another, whether it was Mario or Spider-Man or Luke Skywalker, these friends that I surrounded myself with have stayed with me, a constant buoy in a sometimes turbulent sea.
Everyone has them, even if they come in the form of a sports team or a Hollywood celebrity or a favorite musician or book series. It’s at the heart of any fandom, a strong need to belong to something bigger than ourselves, that gives us a sense of meaning and permanence in a world that often makes us feel small and temporary. At their best, they give us an entry into a greater community, something to share with others who may also understand our loyalty. At their most crucial, they give us a confidant, a constant guide that tells us how to not give up, to keep trying to continue looking for our place. They teach us lessons on how to be heroes, or successes or just how to be better to ourselves and one another.
These things are important, not just to kids but to adults. I can never thank Mario enough for the year he helped get me through. Divorce can really mess a child up, giving them profound feelings of distrust and isolation that can shape them for the rest of their lives. I’ve had lots of incredible friends throughout my life, each one leaving me with fantastic, unquantifiable gifts and lessons both large and small. But this story is a thank you to that first, fictional one, my plumber friend Mr. Mario Mario, and how when all is said and done, I can look at my life today and realize that the things he’s given me aren’t all that fictional after all.