A lot of people—many of them are here at this dinner table, actually—are asking whether I’m going to peacefully hand over the controller to Joey tonight when it’s his turn to play Nintendo. Boy, that’s not a very nice question, is it? It’s very unfair.
First of all, Joey is terrible at Nintendo. As little brothers go, he’s probably the worst. If he gets to play Zelda, you can say sayonara to your rupees. One Life Joey, I call him. Game Over Joey.
I’ve heard people say it looks like I’m just wandering around in the game when I play. Can you believe that? You know I’m making tremendous progress. I’m making progress like nobody’s ever seen. The cowards at Nintendo won’t show it to you on the progress bar, though, will they?
You should have seen Super Mario 64 when I started playing. It was ridiculous. Some not-so-super dummy was about halfway through, but had screwed it up massively. I had to delete the whole game and start over. Really, none of the Nintendo time I’ve logged so far should even count.
Hey, Dad, hand me a new water glass. I think this is the worst water glass in the whole world. See, you drink from the far end of it, like this, and it spills all over your shirt. It’s not good.
Look, we have a system in this house, right? The person who does the most chores is the person who gets to play Nintendo. But the chore chart is rigged. There are a lot of crooked people taking advantage of it. They’re useless with a joystick, and they’re getting away with murder.
Everybody knows I do more chores than anybody. But half of the time, you don’t even see them on the chart. How come? Maybe somebody tore the stickers off and put them in a dumpster. I’m not saying who.
What’s even worse is that Joey—Cheating Joey, I call him—has got five, sometimes six, stickers on the chart at once. Isn’t that interesting? I heard these kids at school saying they were getting paid big bucks to do some lowlife’s chores for him so that he could play Nintendo. Now, maybe they weren’t talking about Joey, or maybe they were. But, in my opinion, that’s very dishonest. We ought to look into putting Joey in a timeout.
When you think about it, even if it was supposed to be Joey’s turn, according to the “system,” which has been a disaster for everybody, it should really still be my turn.
Why does Joey get to play Nintendo at all? Because he’s my “brother”? I hate to tell you this, Dad, but people are asking questions. Maybe Joey should sign up for 23andMe.
No, don’t even get me started on the Ancestry.com report. It’s candy. Anybody can get one. You see it all the time—packs of kids roaming the streets saying it’s their turn to play Nintendo, hauling around Ancestry.com results they printed out at Kinko’s, looking for some weak family they can trick. Nobody with any brains believes it. And yes, Mom, I’ve seen the so-called family photos of when we were babies. It’s amazing what they can do with deepfakes these days. It’s out of control.
The more I think about it, the more it seems like I should just keep the controller, so nobody gets hurt. Otherwise, you’re going to see people expressing themselves in a major, major way. You’re going to see folks sneaking up to press the power button on the Nintendo while Joey’s playing Donkey Kong, and I don’t blame them. Maybe we ought to see if there’s a power button on Joey. I know, I know, I’m not supposed to say that.
By the way, Joey, if you were actually smart, you’d ask Mom and Dad for a PlayStation. People are fed up with Nintendo.
Anyway, I’m bored. Can I go watch TV?
