(You shouldn’t give up)

I was playing Need for Speed III. Ancient game, but I like it all the same. After a while, all the cute graphics and all become meaningless; all that is left is sharp right, slow left, brake hard and sharp left (let the tail swerve around, buddy), dodge that fiendish blue truck, and so on…

Anyways, that’s not the point. I was playing with my favourite Lamborghini Diablo SV against seven El Ninos on Atlantica, one of the faster tracks. The El Ninos were a lot better than me, but I tried my best to try my best. Halfway through the first lap, I hit a wall. I eventually groaned up to a decent speed, but by then, I was back by considerable distance, a downtrodden eighth among eight cars.

I thought of pressing [Esc]. I did, too. The pause menu showed up. After a quiet battle inside of me, I hit Continue. The once-race-now-turned-catch-up game started.

Halfway through the second lap, I had covered up a lot of the distance and even managed to barge into the group of proud Ninos. I was going sixth among eight when I hit a wall again. Five seconds later, as I groaned up to 100 mph again, the upper right-hand corner of my screen showed 8^th of 8.

I didn’t press [Esc].

I ended the race with a podium finish, a broken, yet proud (if NFS III could show car damage, or user mental status) Diablo SV among much faster El Ninos, third among eighth.

1Life.