I'm Looking Through You

Hello, and welcome back from the weekend. I rediscovered tetris on Saturday. When I was younger, I totally got addicted to tetris, along with the rest of my family. We had this little handheld game that I won because I had sold 13,000 rolls of wrapping paper for the school fundraiser (totally worth it). I would stay up late into the night hunched over with a flashlight building walls with little tetraminos, until my mother would poke her head in the door and whisper/yell, "Are you still playing that ridiculous game? Give it to me. You've abused the privilege."
"Aww come on, mom! I'm on a tear. Total high score opportunity."
"No. Absolutely not. You need to go to bed. Young boys need their sleep and I'll not have you up to all hours rotting your brain with that drivel... wah wah wah waaah wah."
She tore the game from my hands; this was fairly easy due to the pressure-sweat that had been building up on my hands since level 7. I slept fitfully, having many nightmares.
In the morning, when I went out to the kitchen to grab a bowl of Frosted Mini-Wheats, I found my mom sitting at the kitchen table playing tetris, puffy bags under her eyes.
"How's the drivel?" I asked.
"I just wanted to see what all the fuss was about," she whimpered, "I think I've got carpal tunnel. Get the shoehorn and help me pry my fingers away."
I obliged her, and then she made me a Belgian waffle. As I packed my backpack, I stealthily slid the handheld game into the big pocket. My mom caught me. "I think you better leave that here," she said.
"You just want to play it."
"No, I just want you to do well in school."
"No you don't!" I yelled "You just want to beat my high score."
"Nonsense. I beat that last night. It was pretty easy."
And so, for the second time in eight hours, she wrestled the game from me. And when i came home from school, there she was, hunched over the game. My dad came home and confiscated the game from both of us. "You just want to play it yourself," we both muttered, Gollum-like.
"Don't be silly. I'm your father. I'm a bastion of self-control."

Dinnertime. We all gathered around the table and dug in. All but one. My mom called for him. No response.
"Jon-Erik, go get your dad. He's in our room."
So I went to my parents' room. The door was closed. I knocked, and heard the little sounds of something small being shoved somewhere hidden.
"What?" his voice came from behind the door.
"Dinner."
"Ok."
He emerged from the room, pale and rubbing his wrists. I knew it. We were like coins scraping the gum from each other. Every time one of us was unwillingly freed, another was willingly stuck. *

What does that have to do with today's song? I leave it to you, my dear viewer, to draw your own parallels. Let me know if you think of some good ones. Sir Paul McCartney wrote this song about his then-girlfriend Jane Asher, who had started wearing only cellophane.

My access to recording equipment is sort of spotty, and when I get a hold of some, I often give up on figuring out how to use it. This should be resolved within this week. In the meantime, these videos with that obnoxious ringing in the background will have to do.

*This account of my childhood is heavily fictionalized: my mother never made me Belgian Waffles.