by Daniel "Tanz" Lattanzio, staff writer

I have an outline of the column I was going to write; I was going to talk about receiving my "Party in a Box" from winning the Mountain Dew XBOX 360 promotion. I was then going to segue into how Microsoft is buying my support for this next generation. I have bulleted items and everything - that is pretty good for me. But something my mom said kept coming up; I couldn't leave out how amusing it was, or its poignancy, given the situation. The next thing I knew, what I was writing took another turn; no matter how hard I tried, I could not turn it back to my original concept. I realized that I wanted to write about the XBOX, but that is not what I needed to write. I needed to write about the person that started it all, the one that got me into gaming. So, allow me to get personal this time...

Last Tuesday, at the age of 71, my mom died. She had suddenly become sick and my sister took her into the hospital on Halloween. As soon as I finished trick or treating with my son, I went to the hospital where I stayed with her, off and on with my sister, until the end. The doctors didn't know what was wrong, and every day there was some new complication: her kidneys shut down, she had a heart attack, she may have had a stroke - it went on like this for a week. Honestly, I have been somewhat in a numbed state of shock; getting all of her affairs in order is keeping me pretty busy and distracted. Over lunch the other day, Jeremy the Loner remarked that he almost thought that the news was hitting him harder than me. I explained that it was only because I hadn't had time to let it sink in yet.

One of the last days she was lucid and we were talking, she suddenly had a flash and her face lit up and she said, "Dann - I forgot to tell your sister that you won that 'Box' thing...where you're running down the beach." Even though she was medicated, I knew what she meant: she was referring to the Mountain Dew commercial for the contest with the guy running and yelling "I won, I won!" I had to giggle, because here she was, hooked up to machines with uncertainty hanging thick in the air of the ICU ward, and she was mad at herself for not telling my sister something that was so trivial. Even with everything she was going through, she was still excited for me.

Those were the words I was stuck on when I wrote the original version. Her sentence and her environment was such an odd juxtaposition that I had to share that. But it also hijacked my train of thought; it wasn't some obstruction to acknowledge and navigate around - I could only follow where it led me. To dangle a preposition, I HAD to.

It took me a few days, mulling everything over, when I realized why that sentence was so important to me: it was one of our shared loves. It was a common bond that ran deeper than either of us knew.

It goes back over a couple dozen years ago when she brought home an Atari 2600 (or VCS as it was called then). At the time, my mom became the coolest person ever. As our game collection grew, she played as much as I did. When she worked midnights , I used to catch her playing River Raid and Frogger (her two favorites), and she would still be playing after I left for school. I asked her once why she sometimes would repeatedly kill Frogger, and she told me that was how she de-stressed. I laughed, not knowing I would understand exactly what she was doing many years later. She eventually became pretty good at River Raid and would occasionally beat me. To her credit, she was a gracious winner as she was a good loser; after all, "It's on a game," she'd remind me.

Years later, when I was in Junior High, I dropped hints about the new system Nintendo was coming out with; to my surprise, she bought me an NES just after launch. (She even got me the one I wanted: the version with Super Mario Bros. - not the one with Gyromite, Duck Hunt and the dumb robot.) We kept the Atari in the basement, so she could have her River Raid and we put the NES in the living room. She didn't play the NES much (she didn't like the rectangular controller), but she enjoyed watching the Legend of Zelda and she thought the ambiance of Metroid was "pretty cool."

After that, when the Atari finally gave up the ghost, I scoured garage sales until I found an old Atari 7800 for her; it was backwards compatable and she could still play her old games.

When the Playstation rolled around, I bought one of those "classic collections" with River Raid on it. I have been searching, but I still cannot find the photo I took of her trying to figure out the Playstation controller. (She thought it had "too many damn buttons.") Once she was squared away, I saw her skills had barely atrophied and she was shooting boats and refueling on oil tankers like nobody's business. Heck, when she'd come over, she liked to watch me play the Grand Theft Auto series. There is nothing cooler than hearing your mom say, "When you're finished with a hooker, you can kill her and get your money back? That's pretty cool!" - so screw you parental watchdog groups.

The other day, as my sister and I were going through her things, and I saw one of the presents my sister had given her last Christmas: one of those joystick controllers with the old games built in. I couldn't resist sitting on her bed and playing a few rounds of Galaga, knowing she would have laughed at how easily I was getting killed.

On Saturday, my 360 will be arriving. When she lamented forgetting to tell my sister, I told my mom, "You'll have to come over and play it with me when you get out of the hospital!" Even though I was beginning to suspect she wasn't leaving, I saw her slight smile and knew that, no matter what, I wouldn't be playing alone - no matter how cliched that seems. She gave me this obsessive escapist hobby and shared my love for it, and I cannot thank her enough. Now, I sit with my son playing X-Men Legends, waiting for the day he can wield a controller as well as he can fling his toys.

When I get that baby hooked up, Mom, the first race in Need for Speed is for you; I just hope I do better than Frogger against the other cars.

Come back in a few days for the pre-release XBOX 360 review. Maybe I'll even have an XBOX Live gamer tag by then…

Your friend, Tanz
Email: darktanz@excite.com
AIM: DanielAtDP
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