2. I finally figured out a puzzle.

I had played Metroid Prime on the GameCube since I was a kid, but I had never gotten past a certain part. I always ended up at this one window overlooking a pit of electrified ooze, but with no way to cross it. I flung myself to my death and retraced my steps for years with no luck.

But then I was hanging out with my buddy Brian, whose video game prowess is truly something to behold, when I plugged in the game and got to the window. I jumped to my death over and over and asked him what to do, but he couldn't figure it out either. We just fell into a pool of goop and died in agony.

I had thought for sure that I was going to finally beat this game built for young adults and in anger I started mocking the game's controls. I fired my arm cannon at the gap and that's when something changed. The shot hung in the air inches from my face. The shots will impact on walls and leave a bright orange stain for a second before fading, but this one was floating there in the rain. At first I thought it was a bug, until I noticed that the rain was bouncing off something invisible just above it. I equipped the X-Ray visor (which had been all but useless up until that moment).

There it was-the answer to the puzzle. The platforms had been invisible! In moments I jumped up the platform and found more, just enough to get across. I was so happy, I was finally able to beat the game. I gallivanted through the ludicrously white and black puzzle and made it to the other side. Where I immediately died over and over and over again.

3. I played Mortal Kombat with friends.

I'm in a metal band called Lasciate (and Justice Or Consequence, but that has no bearing on the story) and we had to get up early and go to a show the next day, so we all stayed over at our lead vocalist's house. We ate party mix and played Mortal Kombat to find out who was the deadliest ninja in the band (hint: it wasn't me). We had Halo death-matches as well and made pizza. It was like the sleepover I never had as a kid. Being in a band isn't easy, it's like being married to people you don't quite agree with at all times. This was one of the wholly and completely good moments we all had in the band, and it's one we'll all probably hold on to for awhile.

4. My cousin introduced me to video gaming.

My aunt, Randi, and cousin, Daniel, live two hours away from me in Philadelphia and my grandparents used to live a little further away. I hated long car rides, but I loved going. When we went to visit them, I was ecstatic. Randi is an amazing cook and she always made way too much food and Dan is 6'4" and loves video games. He'd carry me around and whip me through the air as his mom shouted at him to stop and I giggled.

He and I would go to his room, he'd pick out a game, and pop it in. Sometimes he'd hand me a controller that wasn't plugged in to anything and tell me I was helping, but other times, he'd let me actually play the games. Suddenly, I wasn't a short, underweight kid with ADHD. I was James Flippin' Bond! I could vent my frustration and anxieties and have fun at the same time! Then he did something amazing. He gave me his old Nintendo64 for my birthday (I think, I was like 8 at the time).

I've been playing on that system ever since, I even played Super Smash Bros. on it in my girlfriend's college dorm, and to 8 year old me, that is one of the coolest sentences I've ever said.

5. It solidified a friendship.

I didn't have many friends growing up, just people I associated with at school. In ninth grade, Brian and I had the same Health class. We made the same jokes, were annoyed by the same things, and we both were classic slackers.

One day, he asked to come over. I was hesitant, but he insisted. We watched some terrible action movie and lampooned it the entire time. We played video games and read articles from Cracked.com until he had to go home. It was fun. We ended up doing that as often as we could throughout high school, and we sometimes do it even now. Although, nowadays, we try not to order in fifty bucks worth of pizza and garlic bread and drink half a case of soda whenever we hang out.