Today I treated myself to lunch, which as I rapidly approach fatherhood and therefore become gradually poorer, is a rarity. At any rate, as I sat there uvula-deep in a plate of Ledo's Buffalo wings watching obscure sports on ESPN with the sound turned down, I heard an old familiar tune that brought back memories from times long ago. I don't know quite how to describe it in words, but it was an increasingly rapid pulsating sound that I immediately recognized as vintage electronica that I had first heard in the arcades of yesteryear. Ah yes, it was the sound of a gobbled power pellet, the mere swallowing of which turned all the othewise unpallatable ghosts blue and therefore edible on a circa-1983 Ms. PacMan game.
I tried my hand at most of the popular video games growing up: PacMan, Frogger, Donkey Kong, etc. This was back in the early days before realistic space ship graphics and sexy heroines like that Tomb Raider chick. This was when a pixelated triangle represented a space invader and, as far as I know, no teenage boys fantasized about the maiden in Donkey Kong. Arcade games were more prominent then than they are now. Sure, you'd see them at the arcade and the skating rink, but there would also be at least one in the grocery store, the children's dentist's office, and some restaurants. Pizza Hut always had a two-player table Pac Man game where players could sit down and square off against each other. Looking back, it took forever for them to bring that pizza out to your table, and it was probably because they wanted you to keep throwing quarters into the Pac Man and the jukebox.
One particular machine I remember was the one in the Lawrenceville Food Giant grocery store on the corner of Scenic Highway and Gwinnett Drive. After the Food Giant closed up shop, Quality Foods took over. The same facility has been host to a Goodwill for years now and neighboring stores include a pawn shop and a cambianos cheques, but originally it was a Food Giant, complete with handwritten signs in the produce section and a Brach's candy display that called out to sweet-toothed cleptomaniacs of all ages. Near the front entrance where customers could return their glass bottles for credit was a Ms. Pac Man machine.
There was one guy who usually played it. He was a tall skinny white kid with greasy almost-but-not-quite-shoulder-length hair that looked like it was always in need of being cut. He was a few years older than me and I recognized him as the brother of a kid in my fourth-grade class. My classmate's name was Jerry, and Jerry looked like a smaller version of his older brother whose name I don't quite remember but something tells me it might have been Terry. Jerry had his older brother's unkempt hair, his stale cigarette smell, and I imagine most of his clothes once the older brother grew out of them. In the days when teachers segregated kids into reading group according to skill level, Jerry was never in the Blue Birds; he was always in the Buzzards. Once when I wasn't doing my homework my teacher took me aside and whispered, "Do you want to end up like Jerry?" I think the politically correct term is low-income Ivory Recycling.
Anyway, this guy -- the brother; not Jerry -- would ask to straighten store shelves or mop the floor for a period of time just so he could earn quarters to put into that Ms. Pac Man machine. He could play forever on a single quarter. He was just that good. Sometimes I would stand behind him along with other kids and watch while my mother was grocery shopping. He liked being watched and would give a play-by-play of what his next move was. He had learned tricks that most people didn't know like where to pause so the ghosts wouldn't find you or how to jostle the joystick so you could pass through a ghost unscathed. He would successfully play level after level until he used up all his extra turns. Then he would always curse and hit the side of the machine.
One day I asked my mother who got to keep the quarters people put into the Ms. Pac Man machine and she told me that the money probably went to the grocery store manager. Even as a kid I realized that Jerry's older brother was basically being exploited for his labors in exchange for a few short-lived moments of recreation. Sadder still is that he chose exploitation. Come to think of it, I don't remember seeing Jerry or his older brother in middle school or high school in the succeeding years. I'd bet money they each dropped out. Furthermore, something tells me they're still no strangers to that same store now that it's a Goodwill.
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