I was Player 2

Growing up has always been difficult but even then, someone's got to have it worse than the rest of the others and for those people, that someone was me.

I didn't have a lot of money growing up, or rather, my parents didn't, and no amount of love changes the economic hardships of the working-class. Now I know that makes me sound like an ingrate, but I'm not blaming my parents for being poor. I'm not; I'm just trying to provide some context as to what it was like being me back then. Back then, I was a kid and Jesus Christ, kids are fucking stupid.

I grew up in the 90's, which meant that my favorite pastime in the world was to sit in a dark room and slowly ruin my eyesight with the help of my 24" Panasonic cathode ray tube television. It was the era of Ninja Turtles, Sailor Moon, and Biker Mice from Mars, but I didn't know what any of that shit was because my family didn't have basic cable - our television programs consisted of whatever blurry, static-laced, government-subsidized broadcasts our rabbit-ear antennas could grab at low-band radio frequencies.

That's why I didn't watch a lot of T.V. What I did do was play a metric shit-tonne of video games, or one thousand assloads for those of you that don't understand the metric system.

My console of choice was the SNES, a beautiful, grey, Japanese joy box that my uncle had given my brother and me last Christmas and the only three games we had to play were Super Mario World, Street Fighter II: World Warrior, and Donkey Kong Country. We played every one of those games to death, but D.K. was by far our favorite and we would spend countless hours jumping around, getting blasted out of barrels, and grabbing banana's by the hundreds to get a new life. Of course, we didn't actually get a new life, but I wasn't cynical enough to realize that when I was nine. That came later.

My brother Mikey was eight years my senior. He was woopsie baby #1 and I was the sequel. As I said, we didn't have much money, and that meant that our folks weren't around, most of the time. For every day after school from 3-8, it was my brother Mikey who came to pick me up from the red-bricked monstrosity they called a school and I would go with him until we got home and then we'd play some video games.

I was always Player 2. That was the rule - no matter what game, Mikey was Player 1 and I was Player 2. That meant he was Mario and I was Luigi, that he was Ken and I was Ryu, and that he was D.K. while I was Diddy. Always. And that was okay because he was my brother and this was his brotherly prerogative.

I'm not sure how long this went on, but when I think back to my childhood, this is what I remember. I also remember when things changed.

Like most couples, my folks had good and bad days. Most days were good, but near the end of the month, the bad days always came. On those days, there'd be screaming and yelling, but I didn't think too much about it because they always told me everything was fine when I asked them about it and I believed them because kids are stupid. My parents lived in the adult world, doing adult things and I was a kid, but Mikey wasn't, and I didn't realize that until later.

One day, Mikey got a job.

He got a job at Electro-Paradise, the local arcade that people used to go to play video games. I didn't of course, because I didn't have any quarters, but people, white folks did, and they went often. And while they were there, they'd get pizza, fries, and Cokes because they had money and Coke won the Cola Wars. And Mikey would be there, serving them their pizza, and at the end of the month, he'd help my folks out with things like rent because that's the kind of person Mikey was.

So I started going home alone but I wasn't lonely because D.K. was still there and Mikey would still play with me when he got back, though it seemed like he was coming home later every day. He also looked tired. So one day, I asked him what was wrong, but he was an adult now, so he smiled and he told me "Nuthin'" and I believed him because I was a kid. Then, he asked me what I wanted for Christmas. I said I wanted Mortal Kombat 3 and he laughed and said "Okay" and then we finished the bonus level. God I was just so stupid.

About a month after that in December, Mikey didn't come home. He just...never came home. My parents and I didn't find out why until two days later, after Christmas, when the police found him resting inside a dumpster. He had been shot twice in the back of the head and left wrapped in a garbage bag for somebody else to unwrap. And that's how my brother died.

The police never found out who did it. They did, however, speculate that Mickey probably saw something he shouldn't have and got shot. This was the 90's remember, and crack cocaine was flooding the streets. A lot of bodies, especially black ones, were hitting the ground and Electro-Paradise was a money laundering front for those filthy, money-grubbing NIGGERS who didn't give a SHIT that my brother didn't deserve to die.

We buried him a week later with the assistance of the state.

Later that night, when I went through Mikey's stuff, I found a copy of Mortal Kombat 3 tucked away underneath his mattress.

I’m sorry Mikey; you deserved so much better.

What I wouldn't give to be your Player 2 just one more time.