Pac-Man . . . dead!

They said it was an accident. 

But when I saw Pac-Man lying in the street, I knew it was suicide.

The police asked me for a statement, but what could I say? I knew him, sure, but we weren't close. You needed money to hang out with Paccy back in the day, and I was always broke. Too many quarters on comic books, not enough on games. He'd shake his head at me -- well, his whole body, really.

I knew what he'd been through, of course. The ghosts that haunted him. They tell me he would mumble things in his sleep about them. "Inky... Inky! No!" "Pinky! Tell Blinky to stop!" "NOOO, CLYDE!" They never let him be.

And of course there was the eating disorder. Never seen anyone so driven to feed his face. Sure, a lot of it was healthy food, cherries and oranges and apples and melons and so on, but he never stopped. He'd try to joke about it, how it helped him keep in shape -- that being round -- but as he got older it slowed him down.

Then the ghosts would catch up.

It's hard to be a celebrity on the wane. Once upon a time he was everywhere. There were books written about him.

As if anyone truly could.

There was even a hit song, for Pete's sake. But before he knew it, he was fit for nothing but the old fad's home.

The years weren't kind, although he denied that it hurt him. "I AM big!" he would say. "It's the CONSOLES that got small!"

There was the usual family drama. Ms. Pac-Man got her own place and left. Junior Pac-Man struck out on his own, and fell in with rough customers like Yum-Yum and Tim. Then his precious Baby got hooked on pinball. Paccy took all that on the chin, or would have if he'd had one.

The biggest blow was when his father died in 2017. The old man was 91, but somehow Paccy wasn't prepared. Paccy was shocked when he got the news. Something went out of the big guy that day. No more rolling with the punches.

Two years later, he was gone.

We might all think that Paccy left us some good lessons -- never stop moving, never let the ghosts catch up, always be nimble and slip out the side, a good two-step can fool your enemies. But I think that what I learned is that no matter how good we are, there's a 256 out there for all of us. No matter how many lives we get, we still only have one life, and when it's over, it's time to pay the piper.

Twenty-five cents. One credit. No returns.

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[NB: I have no idea what the yellow thing on the ground was in the top photo that inspired this entry. When the dog and I returned that way it was gone. Maybe Pac-Man went to that big High Score list in the sky.]