TRUE CONFESSION OF A PINBALL WIZARD

          I was reminded recently of something that happened when I was about 12 or so. My parents took me to an amusement park somewhere in Pennsylvania that had an arcade (long before even a faint idea of video games).  I wandered in with my pennies, nickels, and dimes to play my heart out with all the available lo-tech, mechanical, coin-swallowing games that promised the lucky winner pocketknives, compasses, harmonicas, x-ray glasses, etc. plus the ones that would tell my fortune or to just win against some fictitious bad guy behind glass.

          There were pinball machines everywhere of every adventure theme you can imagine. I was never any good at those. The only knack I had was to put the machine in “tilt” faster than anybody I knew—if that was to be regarded as a skill, which, of course, it was not. So I made my way around the entertainment wonderland of games and gimmicks, and happened upon a guy at a pinball machine playing like gangbusters. He said to me, “Hey, kid! You want to play this?”

          I was a little bit intimidated by that thought, and I said, “I’m not very good at pinball.” He said, “You will be at this one.” Then he showed me that he had racked up about 21 or so free games on it, and he was tired of playing. Then he said that the machine just keeps giving free games whether or not you score or win—it was stuck in some kind of mechanical mode and you couldn’t lose.

          So I took over the helm, and he disappeared somewhere in the crowd. In the meantime, as I was playing, along came a couple other kids who stood there watching me, not knowing anything about what was going on. They were amazed at my talent. They called over a couple of other kids. “Hey, look how many games, this kid has won!” A crowd started to gather around me, and the pinball machine just kept on a-giving. I forget how many games I ended up with, but it was enough to make people think I was the real thing—an amazing pinball wizard!

          I forget exactly what happened next other than me offering to let somebody else take over because I also got tired of it. I remember that I walked away and never told anybody the truth about it—I was too caught up with my moment of glory. I knew that they would eventually find out for themselves, and my reputation would be tarnished after I was gone; but somehow it seemed worth it, however briefly it lasted. “The wizard has left the building” and indeed I did.

          The memory of that day came surging back as I stood in a room full of pinball machines at the Golden Nugget Flea Market. There was a part of me that wanted to put a quarter in and see if age had improved my skill, but none of them were plugged in anyway, plus another part of me said let the glory of your pinball wizardry moment stand.

          I don’t know what the moral of the story is—maybe there isn’t any—it’s just a story. But at the risk of making too much of it, I will say that it occurs to me that though my “amazing’ moment was short-lived and admittedly contrived, there are people who are genuinely amazing, and what they are and what they do is far more impressive than any pinball wizard’s pseudo accomplishment. I’m thinking of people who are calm and peaceful in the midst of chaos; I’m thinking of people who are nice in spite of any meanness they incur in the world; I’m thinking of people who are generous even though they themselves are far from rich (generosity takes many forms, by the way); I’m thinking of people whose smiles and ways have healing power to bring the presence of joy and love wherever they go and wherever they are.

          Just a thought.