There are a few main reasons you might take up a hobby. The most obvious is that you find an activity that really engages and challenges you, and you want to do it more. That's a great reason for a hobby! But it's hardly the only reason.
Besides seeking entertainment, people also seek relaxation. Some hobbies simply calm and sooth our battered spirits. We seek solace from the stress of the outside world by submerging ourselves in the peace of these hobbies, and for that, they serve their purpose. They give us a chance to recharge our batteries. It seems to me that, without this kind of release valve, we would all quickly go crazy.
I'm not completely crazy yet, so I can only assume I've had some of these hobbies. And looking at my life, that seems to be the case: video games have always been my go-to for relaxing, ever since I was given a Nintendo Entertainment System around my fifth birthday.
There was a particular game I loved for the NES more than any other, and that game was A Boy and His Blob.
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What intrepid young boy has not dreamed of having a pet blob for his very own, to feed a wide variety of jelly beans and invoke such useful and entertaining transformations as those you see above? A quick run-down of the jelly bean flavors and their related transformations:
- Licorice: ladder
- Strawberry: bridge (very short, so much as to be nearly unusable, but Boys Who Have Blobs do not belittle themselves by jumping.)
- Cola: air bubble (lets you breathe underwater; DOES NOT LET YOU FLOAT)
- Cinnamon: blowtorch
- Apple: jack (like, a car jack)
- Vanilla: umbrella
- Tangerine: Trampoline
- Root beer: rocket (this lets you go to space!)
- Honey: hummingbird
- Ketchup: causes the Blob to "catch up" with you
- Punch: hole (not sure how this works, but you can fall through stuff with it)
- Coconut: coconut
- Lime: key (these are rich)
- Orange: vitamin gun (yeah, I don't know either)
I was much, much too young to understand what any of this meant or how it was supposed to work. This is a very difficult game. I just liked to feed the Blob jelly beans and watch his cute transformations!
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| Ohmygosh even his BOUNCING is cute! |
I really didn't have a clue what was going on, and you could die by falling down an open manhole in the second screen of this game. Every area was filled with traps that were meant to seem innocuous but kill you in a spectacular and gruesome fashion, should you have been so foolish as to not foresee what flavor of jelly bean your Blob would prefer in advance. It was awesome.
For some reason, even the frustration of dying over and over again in a game affects me mentally as a form of relaxation. In fact, it's gotten to the point where I can't even enjoy a game unless I have a chance of dying nearly constantly. It's not that I avoid easy games; I still play them, but they feel like a drag compared to the excitement of risking death at every instant.
You'd think that I would find real life a bit more of a hoot, since I face the prospect of horrible death every time I drive on the highway. But that just doesn't do it for me; there's no opportunity to apply what I've learned the next time (as far as I know) in the case I clock out early.
I've sometimes been called a masochist, but that's not really the case. Pain carries lessons, and I just love to learn. The pain is a small price to pay, after all.
Thanks for helping me learn, friend.
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