It’s so easy to label people these days. From the way folks have been talking, you’d think everyone falls into two buckets: those who voted against the mayor who promised to blow up the city and those who voted for the mayor who promised to blow up the city. And now that the mayor, whom I voted for, is blowing up the city, as he promised, I’m one of many people who are being unfairly blamed for something I didn’t want. Okay? I didn’t want the mayor to blow up the city like he mentioned many times; I just wanted him to fix the old bowling alley like he promised in passing once. Anyone saying I’m partially responsible for the explosions is just a sign that they have no argument.
Before you rush to cancel me, try to remember the mayor made lots of promises, and I didn’t expect him to keep them all. Yes, he promised to turn our playgrounds to glass and take a blowtorch to the schools; yes, he said that he was going to use napalm on every grocery store, but, as I said, he also promised he was going to fix the old bowling alley.
Oh, how I loved that bowling alley as a kid. It’s been closed for twenty years, so when the mayor mentioned he’d fix it if we elected him, I had to give it a chance. To be fair, he was also the mayor a few years ago, made the same promise, and failed to fix the bowling alley then. But he did live up to his promise to reintroduce smallpox into local daycares, so at least you know he can get things done, unlike the other guy who did neither of those.
I’ve seen all the attacks online. You use the mayor’s own clear statements of purpose against me just because I consciously chose this. “The mayor said he was going to blow up the city.” Yeah, metaphorically. “The mayor brought up his desire to see the residents of the city cleansed by flame in every speech.” Sure, if you take it out of context, maybe. “The mayor’s election slogan was, ‘Blow It All Up and Watch Them Suffer,’” which is scary only for people stupid enough to take him seriously. The fact that he had to go so far as to pour gasoline all over the Burger King before throwing a Molotov cocktail through the window shows what his opponents have pushed him to do. It’s really his critics that have kept him from fixing the bowling alley.
Let me reiterate: I do not approve of the mayor locking the doors of the mall and igniting a bus full of C4 in the food court. I may have worn a shirt that said, VOTE FOR THE MAYOR WHO WILL BLOW UP THE MALL FOOD COURT, but that was just my fun way of saying I only cared about the bowling alley. It makes me sad that you think I wanted people to get hurt by this. Especially when it’s something that directly affected me for the first time in my life, when my nephew was accidentally trapped in that mall when it exploded. Give me a little grace here. Plus, my nephew voted for the other candidate, so it’s kind of his fault that he ended up there to begin with.
Is it so bad that I wanted the bowling alley back? Maybe that’s what you’re really mad about. You wanted the mayor to fail. The negativity around the smell of roasting pig is just a facile attempt to distract from his potential future successes. I bet the mayor is about to fix up the bowling alley, and I’ll walk in, and I’ll be twelve again, and all the adults will be so tall, and it will be my party, and everyone—even the kids who don’t like me—will have to sing happy birthday. The previous mayor said that rebuilding the bowling alley wouldn’t make it 1996 again, which, to me, is unacceptable.
It’s disgusting and, frankly, counterproductive to point out that I voted for this. To imply that I had personal free will and agency when I walked into a voting booth and picked Mayor Bomberman is insulting. Here I am, admitting that I did not actually want the mayor’s biggest promise to happen, and you’re criticizing me for directly being part of the reason it’s happening. You should be praising me for being able to admit that—well, not that I was wrong, heaven forbid—but perhaps my faith in the mayor who was arrested thirty-four times for arson was misplaced.
At the end of the day, you can imply that I “wanted this” as much as you like. You don’t know what’s inside my heart. The mayor said he’d fix the bowling alley. Just because he hasn’t fixed the bowling alley and announced that he’ll never fix the bowling alley, doesn’t mean I’m dumb or a fool. And while he may have also promised he’d re-segregate the city, crash the city’s economy, and turn the city’s only remaining functional hospital into a big Jersey Mike’s, I can guarantee that I only wanted the Jersey Mike’s.
So, no, I’m not “happy now” that our zoo has been turned into an open-air animal mausoleum. But of the options I had, only one mayor promised to completely change the city. And you know what? At least he is doing something. It may kill a lot of people. It may leave others without homes or jobs. But I respect a man of action, regardless of what that action is and whether or not it’s going to make things better or worse.
Now, I’ll just sit back and wait for the bowling alley to get fixed.
Mike Drucker’s new book, Good Game, No Rematch, combines ridiculous personal stories and fascinating gaming history to explore the poignant ways that electronic entertainment can save us from ourselves. Or humiliate us, case depending.