Teenage Mutant Ninja Musings

In the summer of my sixteenth year, I took my first college course. For reasons I can’t fully recall, my friends Allen and John and I, only a few weeks out from completing our sophomore year of high school, enrolled in a psychology class at Westark Community College in Ft. Smith. Every morning for six weeks, we piled into someone’s semi-reliable vehicle, blitzed through a gas station for a junk-food breakfast, and set off to improve our young minds in the local seat of higher education.

This may or may not have been our mothers’ ideas, but I’m sure they encouraged us in our academic pursuit. At the very least, it kept us from pestering them to upgrade our video game consoles from the Nintendo NES to the sleek new Sega Genesis, which had come out a few months prior. Better to spend our time learning about the human mind than to stunt our intellectual growth playing the early versions of Madden Football for hours on end.

Little did they know that, in a eureka moment of adolescent ingenuity, my friends and I found a way to both expand our knowledge and turn our brains to mush. Westark (now UAFS) was located just a mile north of Central Mall, near which was an arcade that beckoned to us. For whatever reason, the three of us fell into playing the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles arcade game after class. It took God knows how many days and probably $50 in quarters, but we finally beat the game. Who cares what our final grades were in our first ever college course? For us, rescuing April and Splinter from the clutches of the evil Shredder was the higher accomplishment.

I remember stories from those days with the clarity that comes with your first adult-ish adventures, but I don’t think about them very often. My eldest son starts college next week. My youngest is the same age I was that summer of the Ninja Turtles. With band-parenting and work and volunteering and launching a novel this fall, who has time to reminisce? Life looks forward, after all.

Not long ago, however, I booked an Air BnB that happened to include a small arcade. And what was the first game I noticed?

You guessed it. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

So of course I played it. But whatever skill I had with Raphael’s twin sais back in the day, I am left with a mere (*ahem) turtle shell of my former ability. Without Allen and John to get the foot soldiers off my back, and without the carefully honed A-B-joystick proficiency of my adolescent years, I never got past the first level. Frankly, I was terrible. Thank God it was a free machine.

Humbling as my failure was, it’s also a good reminder of who I am right now. I can’t do some of the things I once did with ease, which I’m sure would make that early version of myself smirk with superiority. But the current version—let’s call him Eric 48.7—does a much better job of filtering through what’s important and deciding where to spend his energy. I’m no longer good at video games, but could Eric 16.5 play the drums or build a desk? No, he could not. Version 48.7 may be useless as a ninja turtle, but the things he can do are way cooler.

Still, I can’t help but think back on those days with some longing. Not nostalgia, which has never been much a part of my psyche. But a certain longing for simple friendships, formed back when we had time to spare. Allen, John, and I have mostly lost touch over the years, thanks in large part to professions and geography. We became different people, with other webs of relationships to consider. We never stopped being friends. Our friendships just froze in time.

When I think back on Eric 48.7’s life so far, I see that pattern over and over. At virtually every stop in my life, I’ve formed important friendships with people I almost never see anymore. For all its other ills, internet connectivity has enabled occasional check-ins with those folks. But we all know it will never be the same as it was, and while that’s just the nature of life, it’s also a little sad.

The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game reminded me of the people nearest to me at a critical juncture in my life. Our friendships were as immature as we were, true enough. But we tried to watch out for each other. We encouraged and loved each other, such as we were able. What is friendship if not that?

I doubt I ever play this video game again. But I’m glad I got to this time. It brought me back to a season of life that, while not really simpler or better, was at least less cluttered. It’s easier to be friends in such a setting, when all you have to offer is yourself and your time. When that’s all you really expect from another person. When you remember that friendship for its own sake is enough.