Last night, I killed the lights, crawled into bed, and heard…something.

Something oddly familiar.

It had a kind of thin, digital quality, and it was coming through the wall that I share with another apartment. It wasn’t quite music, although there did seem to be a tinny musical thread to it, but there were also an oddly random collection of familiar beeps and boops.

Bloop-bleep-bleep-boop!

Very…very…familiar.

And then it hit me. On the other side of the wall, quite loudly, somebody was playing a Super Mario Brothers game (or some modern relative, more likely, since that franchise will never die.)

And they kept playing it.

Loudly. Speakers-aimed-directly-at-the-wall loudly. I have listened to knock-down-drag-out domestics conducted at half the volume with which Mario was collecting coins and leaping on goombas.

My brief grin of recognition rapidly became a grimace of horror, as I attempted to fall asleep while Mario beeped and booped a few inches away. I wanted to get up and go over, and hand him the damn cheat codes in hopes he’d stop before two AM.

I lived in apartments for over a decade, and yet, I had forgotten some of the high points….