An Event That Was Supposed To Happen Long Ago And Finally Did

And here’s another surprise I have for you: It’s a story. A story about one man’s Saturday afternoon subway ride — during which the impossible happened.

The impossible, I say? Do I mean that all the passengers broke into song? Or that a hummingbird flew out of a man’s coat? Or that someone announced the final digit of Pi?

Almost that amazing…. A boy holding his DS walked up to me as I played my DS and asked me if I wanted to race. He was playing Mario Kart. I was about to fight a boss in The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks. This kid was just too young for me to snap: “I’m on deadline, squirt. Leave this professional alone.”

No, I would later find out from his mom that he was one day shy of his seventh birthday and I couldn’t deny him a good head-to-head in Mario Kart nor miss out on the first and maybe last time I will experience spontaneous local wireless multiplayer gaming. He uploaded me a single-cart stripped-down version of Mario Kart DS so we could race.

Do you realize that Nintendo implies that this kind of insta-gaming is supposed to happen all the time out in the wild? Spirit Tracks, like Nintendogs has a mode that lets people swap items — as if I am ever going to run into anyone in this city of millions who is also armed with the same game at the same time. It’s not going to happen and I’m not about to start hanging out on playgrounds (that’d be creepy).

So we raced twice. He thrashed me the first time because six-year-olds don’t wast time with having to find something to hold onto when the train starts. He had a narrow lead on the second lap when he and his mom had to get off. I thanked him for the race, then went back to it as my train pulled away, he walked up some steps, the framerate dropped and our DS’ lost connection.

Thanks, kid!

That kind of thing ever happen to you in Japan?

What you missed today