marioworld

when i was eight years old, my family took a vacation to Orlanda, Florido to visit world famous Marioworld. my sister laura didn't get to go because she was in college. college is a place you go to be away from your parents but still act like a child. so the rest of us took a plane ride to florida. it was my first time on a plane. i wasn't scared because i didn't give a shit. i don't think i was even paying that much attention. i don't remember paying much attention to anything when i was a kid. mostly, i just watched tv and sat around just thinking about stuff. now i'm older and people expect that i grew out of that but in a lot of ways i'm even worse than i was then. anyway, we went to marioworld because that's where all little kids want to go. mario is this italian mouse who is an expert in plumbing. it's like every kid's dream. we all played the video games and watched the cartoons. we all kept pet mice. we all drew little mustaches on those pet mice. we all tinkered with the backs of toilets and the underbellies of sinks, pretending that we, like mario, were little mice plumbers. we all dreamed of someday moving to a little town in italy, learning the language, maybe finding a nice italian girl and falling in love and opening a little combination plumbing service/pet mice store.

but those dreams are long dead now. i've watched the better part of my 20s fall to the wayside and here i am, barely conversational in italian, little to no real plumbing experience, and i'm less like a mouse than ever.

how did this happen?