I'm currently sitting on the boardwalk in Ocean City, MD. My family has always taken vacations here, and coming here as an adult is basically just me doing all the things I used to do as a kid, but also the things I wanted to because I couldn't... I was a kid. For a long time I just couldn't afford a vacation. I was bound to my job at the cost of my health. And that led to me getting sick when I just wasn't taking care of myself. Being as sick as I was, I wasn't sure I would ever come back here. There was no guarantee I'd recover, and a good possibility I would be dead by now. So I see being here as a triumph on several fronts. I can now afford to take a vacation, and I am now healthy enough to make it here.
Often I would entertain the idea that I was actually dead, watching the world from the afterlife as it just moved on past me. I came back to a world just similar enough to be familiar but different enough to feel like I'm out of place. I felt like a space alien when I tried to swipe my debit card at the supermarket the first time and they told me to tap. And I was just like "that works?"
I told the cashier I was "gone for a while" and they gave me a strange look. I can only imagine they thought I was just out of prison. I tell people now that "I spent five years dead for tax purposes" and that usually gets either a laugh, or a stranger look than the implication I was in prison. A win for me either way.
But returning to places after the passage of such time is bittersweet no matter the circumstances, and being on the Ocean City boardwalk is a good feeling but one that carries a twinge of sadness.
Arcades have always been my happy place. From the Dundalk skateland that had a Darkstalkers machine and an MVS cabinet to Aladdin's Castle where I spent so much money playing DDR, I always felt so at home and comfortable in those spaces. So being back at the boardwalk for the first time in so long, I had to go to the arcades here. I walked along the boardwalk, and man, it's different but in all of the important ways nothing changed. The weird t-shirts. The Thrashers fries. They're selling deep fried oreos now which I am sure is delicious, but the things that would do to my intestinal tract make me cringe in horror.
I stopped at just about every arcade on the way. All of them left me disappointed that they weren't like what I remember. It's all ticket games, coin pushers, or claw machine variants. If they're actual video games they're reworked versions of old school games like frogger or space invaders, or mobile games. I don't mean to sound all boomer about this, like these kids just don't know, that's not what I am complaining about. I saw a lot of kids having a ton of fun, and it was so good to see. The laughter and joy was a delight, and being in such a place is a wonderful experience. Somewhere among those kids is someone building those core happy memories that will make them love the place like I did. Arcades are an important space where, as the great Charles Entertainment Cheese once said, a kid can be a kid. And going to an arcade makes me feel like a kid again.
But being there was also a stark reminder that I am no longer young. The arcades I remember are out of fashion. Those games are niche now. They don't make it to America often, let alone the Ocean City boardwalk. I made it to Sportland, one of the arcades I went to most frequently. I saw more of the same coin pushers and ticket machines. The place changed. Of course it had. Everything changes. But I mourned those days. In a way I was mourning my youth. I found a single neglected Tekken 3 machine and made my Person play me in a first to five. They 5-0'd me. That's how bad I am at Tekken, I got 5-0'd by someone that doesn't play fighting games. But it was fun, and they were a good sport. I also let a kid beat me in Mario Kart, so that was cool. The kid had to be like 10-12. He was happy, and that made me feel good. I won my Person a weird sonic plush, too. I had a good time! A great time! But as I walked out of Sportland with that bittersweet feeling in my chest, I looked over at Marty's Playland, THE arcade I used to spend most of my time at, and I couldn't bring myself to go in. I need it to be just the same as I remember, even though I know it isn't. I need there to be a place unchanged by time, exactly as I remember it, even if it exists only in my mind. And I know that's not reality anymore.
Maybe this is what W.B. Yeats meant when he wrote "There is no country for old men."
But I saw a kid in an Electric Wizard shirt so there is definitely hope for the future somewhere.
