"Very probably, I'm afraid."
Dance Dance Revolution ("DDR" to those in the know) has finally stolen my soul. I got it back, but for those fleeting moments when I was stepping on those pads, it was gone. Way gone.
I could draw parallels between DDR and Douglas Adams's Infinite Improbability Drive. It seems that if I'm thinking of playing DDR and the fates are on my side that day, a series of meaningless coincidences start to occur that result in my actually playing it. For example, the first time I ever played DDR, I almost didn't. I was hanging around at my favourite arcade (The Midway in Ottawa) and there was a couple there that must've met playing DDR and would probably wear finger pads instead of rings when they got married. They were superb. I was blown away. I'm always blown away by even vaguely good DDR players, but these two were the only ones who have ever knocked me right against the wall rather than just off my feet. It's no wonder; they were hypnotized by the darn thing. Their gazes never seemed to waver from the glow of the screen, except when they needed to drop in more tokens or look passionately into each other's eyes - at least, I think that's what they were doing. At any rate, they never seemed to leave the machine, so I was forced to wander about and play Skee-Ball.
Finally, I noticed that the machine was empty. The couple had disappeared, possibly to the washroom to have sex. Partly out of curiosity and partly out of spite, I hopped up on the platform and dropped in the necessary four tokens. I took the easiest song to a B rating, and for an encore I went on to royally screw up a three-foot rated song. After being informed that I must not have eaten breakfast (I actually had, but the machine was impassive to my denials of its allegations) I turned to see the dancing couple sitting on the otherwise unused seats of the Daytona Racing game, watching me play. Their eyes were colder than corpses. I knew then that they were zombie slaves of the game, and that they were judging me unfavourably. Suddenly feeling a bit self-conscious, I stepped off the pad and wandered in the other direction. They went back to the game without giving me a second glance. The callous part of me hopes that the guy knocked the girl up in the washroom. I'll bet it's hard to get As on six-foot songs when you're pregnant.
Today, the day of my official soul-stealing, was the second time I ever played DDR. I was cruising the mall (St. Laurent, for those joining us from the capital) with some Christmas money in my pocket, which was a natural combination for leading me down to the basement arcade. I noticed a DDR machine strategically placed to lure in people who had gone just to the brink of the arcade. What the heck, I said to myself. I'll get one of those five-dollar cards (it was one of those places where you put money on a card and use that) and get in some play time. In fact, I'd been meaning to go to an arcade since school got out.
I didn't go to the DDR machine right away. I started with my usual rounds of pinball, Galaga, and Bust-A-Move. Let me go off-topic for a second here and tell you that the Austin Powers pinball machine is one of the most entertaining that I've played since Creature From the Black Lagoon. There, done. Now I'll go back on-topic.
After Bust-A-Move, I decided to go have a look at the DDR machine. It was one of those imported-from-Japan machines which nobody understood, especially not the two sisters and brother who were trying to figure out how to play. The older sister was just getting started as I wandered up to watch; she was trying to figure out what song to play. This is what stole my soul. I've always been interested in DDR for various reasons (it's the "new thing," everyone seems to talk about it, and thinking about it seems to make me move better) but the song I spotted on the playlist was the clincher for me.
The song was "Long Train Running" by the Doobie Brothers.
Was it fate or was it coincidence that I had only recently become obsessed with this song when I got a Doobie Brothers Greatest Hits CD out from the library? I prefer to think that it was the former.
After the girl figured out how to play by way of missing the first quarter of the song, the brother asked if I was going to play, presumably in an attempt to avoid being forced to play himself. He was caught out when I revealed that it was possible to play side-by-side in two player mode. We danced to the Doobie Brothers song. The sight of their brother dancing alongside someone who was singing along while dancing well was irresistible to the two sisters, who decided to take a picture of us. I got a C rating, which I probably could have improved except that I wanted to try the Duran Duran song, for which I got a B, proving that I can actually do this if I get in the groove. The second highlight of the session came during that song, too, when I leapt straight up in the air for the left-right ending and sent my keys hurtling out of my pocket to land behind the machine, which fortunately wasn't flush with the wall. Then we danced to the Geri Halliwell "It's Raining Men" cover, which was too amusing for me to bother with actually doing proper steps - and yet I got a second B.
Somehow or other, I thought one of the girls called their brother Kevin. When I brought this up, explaining that my name was also Kevin, they said I must have misheard them. They probably partly misheard me too; at first, I think they thought I asked if he was the older sister's boyfriend, which led to my discovery of their siblinghood. As they were leaving, they said "See you later, Kevin!" which left a hole in my heart as I realized that I didn't know any of their names.
I had enough left on my card for one last game of pinball, and then I went home. I had Long Train Running stuck in my head the whole time even though I was taking the bus.
"Is this sort of thing going to happen every time we use the Infinite Improbability Drive?"
"Very probably, I'm afraid."