How Pac-Man influenced a life of thievery...

THE GREEN LIGHT SPECIAL:

I was a 7 year old kid, the year was 1982. A song hit the airwaves and two kids, along with many others, were addicted to a game called Pac-Man. The song may have only encouraged the addiction, but more importantly the album had a cheat maze. I don't like to think of it as cheating though, I would rather consider it a way of learning how to be better at it, although some will disagree with a fair argument. Either way, my brother and I wanted it.

One day our mother took us both on a trip to the store, K-Mart. We must have been shopping for something we desperately needed because we couldn't afford to go shopping for our own hearts' desires. It may have been for pants we needed so badly because we had too many iron-on patches on them already, or maybe it was for socks that were falling apart because we had sewn them so many times they became quilt-looking patches themselves. What ever the reason was we were happy to be there.

My brother and I asked our mother if we could go over to the record section. My brother was a record collector since the age of 8. He was 10 years old that day. He looked feverishly for the "Pac-Man Fever" album and found it. He wanted the maze so badly he opened up the album right there on the spot to see it. Ahhh! As if it was the holy grail for us pac-man addicts. So valuable, it must be obtained. We couldn't leave the store without it! Unfortunately for us we had no money. We needed it by all means necessary.

I was drafted as the look-out. Check! In a slick easy manner my brother slid the already folded maze into his back pocket. Was it this simple, I thought? My brother just stole something, but it felt so right! Muahaha!

We, soon after, met up with our mother and we were anxious to leave. I think I saw a little sweat trikle down my brother's forehead as we walked out the store and it wasn't even hot. But it worked. We got away with a crime. When we got home I was told to never, ever mention what we did that day...

I think today supersedes the stature of limitations to our original agreement...

- Yours turly,
The Pac-Town Kids