During my junior high years, I was a huge fan of video games in general, but Pac-Man specifically. I even owned the Ken Uston book Mastering Pac-Man and learned all of the patterns so that I could excel at the game. Which I did, although I suspect that learning the patterns and reaching new levels of Pac-Man proficiency also means that I had reached new levels of geekness as well.

It’s been only on extremely rare occasions that I’ve played Pac-Man since the early 80’s, when I most often played the game in the Harding bowling alley game room (back when such existed) and at the local Mad Butcher grocery in my hometown. I recently pulled out my Namco Classics TV game featuring Pac-Man. I bought it for about $10 a couple of years ago at Best Buy, Target or some such retailer. When I first acquired it, I hadn’t played Pac-Man in years, and it was great to see Blinky, Pinky, Inky and Clyde again. I enjoyed it for a while, but once again I went on a Pac-Man hiatus. It had sat unused in an armoire since we moved back to Arkansas - nearly a year and a half now - but I have been somewhat addicted to it again since I plugged it back in last week.

For some strange reason, I decided to do a Pac-Man search on YouTube. I’m not sure what I was looking for, but this is one of the first things I found. I thought it was hilarious. But then again, I studied Pac-Man patterns in 9th grade, so perhaps it’s just seems funnier to me because of my inner nerd.