Off Topic: Mike Tyson and the Dorms

I read this article on Yahoo.com about the best sports game of all time. I drummed of memories of my college days in the dorms.

Mike Tyson's Punch Out was rated the best sports video game of all time (read the article here). I would like to point out that like the person playing on this YouTube video, I also was able to beat Mike Tyson.

Someone in the college dorms back in the early 1990's had one of the original Nintendo systems and we all spent hours playing the game. About 3 of us were able to beat Mike Tyson eventually.

One night we arrived back at the dorm after playing basketball until about 2 in the morning. We were still all pumped up and a group of 5 or 6 of us started playing Punch Out. But with a twist to make it interesting. We started playing it with out backs turned to the TV watching the game in a mirror so that everthing would appear reversed. It was still too easy. So I, or at least I remember that it was me, came up with the idea that we would play the game with our backs to the TV with the rest of us telling the player in the room when to punch and duck and so forth.

Everyone was able to beat the first chump, Glass Joe,...except for a guy named John. John was the ultra competitive guy on the floor that even in a silly pick up game would get P.O.'d if you did something like not pass to him whenever he was open. He always had to win. The rest of us were out to just have goof off a bit and blow off studying.

Anyway, John over and over again failed to beat Glass Joe. Everyone else could beat Glass Joe without seeing him everytime. John looked around at us laughing and picked the person that was least likely to have get angry or wound up, Andy, and punched him in the shoulder and stormed out of the room. Everyone started laughing even harder. I remember tears coming down my face I was laughing so hard. Even Andy was laughing. John didn't hang with us much after that, which was OK. Those were really good times...I remember them and smile.

The same can be said even now. If you take yourself too seriously, I can't take you seriously. Being able to laugh at yourself is an asset really.