"You see, you have to jump on their heads, then they just sort of roll over and die."

Few things are as frustrating as sitting next to someone playing a video game badly. The game in question is New Super Mario Brothers for the Nintendo DS. He's spent the last five minutes attempting to get to the halfway mark of World 1-1.

"It's hard though," he observes, the corners of his eyes drawing thin and tight.

He closes the DS. Expertly, he pops out the cart. Looking me directly in the eye, he hands it to me. "You can play this daddy, I'll play Lego Star Wars."

This is Peter, my 5 year old son. Video game wimp.

"No, Dad. Not Kick--Guard!"

It's a tone of disdain I was sure was many years distant. And yet my desire to conquer the monster in my genre-closet has brought me up against a formidable enemy: my son.

"Peter, I think I've got you! Watch out!"

My Raging Phoenix Bo flows naturally into a guard, but it's a trick. He comes in with a simple overhead strike. My left elbow shoots forward. I catch his head with the back end of the staff, and he crumbles. I follow through, translating the motion back and up, bringing him upright. He stands there, head lolling comically. He's helpless. The staff flows behind my back, comes around again, lifting him into the air.

"No!" he cries.

Unable to stop, my staff comes down on his lower back in mid air. I drive his lifeless corpse into the wooden planks of the dock.

Groggy-eyed and pie-shaped, I blunder into the kitchen. I have eyes only for the blinking red light on the coffee machine. I have not showered. I have not dressed. I am a lumbering arabica-bean detector. By the time I turn around from the counter, the single sip of coffee has returned me to humanity, and I see my daughter sitting at the kitchen table. Or rather, I see who I assume is my daughter -- her head is completely concealed by a book as she absentmindedly slurps Puffins-and-milk.

The book is the Dungeons & Dragons Players Handbook.

The ritual of the Leprechaun trap started when she was in pre-school. Her teachers, at the exclaimed "Miss Mary's Preschool!" spent the week leading up to St. Patrick's Day making traps for the Leprechauns. The Leprechauns themselves were barely described. The traps, however, were elaborate, ranging from cardboard boxes full of double sided tape to complex Rube Goldberg contraptions made from dozens of cardboard tubes, candy bait and green-yarn snares.

They never caught any, but those pesky little f*ckers trashed the joint. Chairs inverted, green glitter everywhere. It took the entire class an hour just to put the room to rights.

It was Jen's favorite part of the school year. And she believed.

T minus 0:40 seconds

The screen flashes.

My view of Moria has been obscured. Instead of the pure crystalline view of god-rays and water, I see a series of landscape paintings, interspersed one after another with frames of black.

"Crap."

"What's up?" asks Shawn, on the other end of the headset.

"My screen went stroby on me. I'm guessing it's my SLI dying."

Shawn says something consoling. I miss it. Black. White. Black. White. I'm overwhelmed with a sense of time dilation. It's not deja-vu. It's an oncoming freight train I know all too well. There's a lightning storm in the left temporal lobe of my brain. Again.

My palms burst with sweat. I feel vaguely nauseous.

"But what does it really look like?"

The inside corners of her eyebrows pull center. She's been sitting at her end of the tired, blue-striped couch, gazing slack-jawed at the carpet for over an hour. Now, she looks right at me. Direct eye contact, unblinking and clear.

Jen and I are reading "Three is Company," Chapter 3 of J.R.R. Tolkien's Fellowship of the Ring.

The fact that we're even sitting here on the couch with the decades-old, thousand-plus pages of red-leather-bound fantasy is a personal victory. When Jen was 5, I read "The Hobbit" at her. She paid half-attention until shadows of Mirkwood became too present in the corners of her room. Shortly after her 9th Birthday, just weeks ago, she asked if we could resume Bilbo's journey. I knew it was just an excuse to spend time curled up in the arms of her sometimes-distant and distracted father. Knowing broke my heart no less.

Straight back. Knees slightly bent. Abdomen tight. I strain, lifting the iron plates off the floor for the last time. Warm red tension floods my hamstrings, starting at my heels and climbing my back. A short "hup!" involuntarily sneaks out between my teeth. Pause. Lower. The plates ring. I sit.

“Nice lifts eh? Take it easy,” says Pedro.

I’ve seen Pedro several times a week for nearly 10 years. I don’t know his last name. I don’t know what he does for a living, his taste in music, whether he has a wife, children, or a full time job. I know he benches 225 (which isn’t bad for a guy who must weigh 160 pounds soaking wet). I know he has unbelievable abs, but can’t squat his own weight.

“See you Friday,” he concludes. He raises his hand: a casual, shy wave.

Inexplicably, I raise my hand.

From this position -- two men, with hands raised -- there are only two alternatives. Either one of us swears to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, or we must, by law, continue with the forward motion and give each other a high five.

"I'm sorry?"

The grey faux-granite of the kitchen counter has a sheen of dried soap. I watch the flicker as the politically-correct compact fluorescent bulb alters the texture of the matte. The kitchen, no matter how orderly, is never clean.

"I said, are you OK?" Jessica has had furled concern in the corners of her eyes since we left my Mom's.

"Yeah, I guess," I reply. "Whatever." With this cold slap of passive-aggressive, I shut down the one meaningful, loving conversation I might have had today.

I defocus. My eyes no longer converge see the Corian surface, lining up instead in parallel tracks through the center of the earth, never converging.

I'm in the Monet fire of Braid. What would Tim do?

"Gamers with Jobs?"

Paul’s one of the Coffee Shop Mafia, a breed of Nonfat-Decaf-Latte kakhi that accumulates in the corners of "Sanctuary," the upscale caffeine station where I write 6 hours a day.

"Yeah, it’s a website I write for. Kind of a writers room for gamers with a community inside," I explain, failing.

He’s genuinely perplexed. "But don’t all gamers kind of have jobs unless they’re kids?"

I pause. "I guess you’re right. I didn’t name it, but I’ve always kind of figured it had two exclamation points. You know. Gamers! With Jobs!"

Paul goes back to his vague Italian beverage and his New York Times crossword puzzle. I go back under the chair-and-blanket kindergarten tent of the Internet.

So what distinguishes a gamer who has a job from Gamers! With Jobs!?

In a word: November

“Relax, Mr. Threepwood. I know why you're here. Believe me, you're not the first who's tried. Although, I have to admit, not many get as far as you have.”

1: Er...
2: Um...
3: Golly...
4: Jeepers...

Quick Guybrush, make your call. Get into character. How do you – the player, in the role of Guy Threepwood – really feel right now? Is it more of an “Er” moment? For me, I know it was strictly “Golly” all the way.

The team behind Monkey Island had it right. Dialog trees are ridiculous. So why are we still stuck with them? (Warning, if you care about the secrets of Monkey Island, a game almost 20 years old, stop reading now.)