What if Life Were Like Super Mario?

I'm not really a gamer.  I don't play all the new, shoot-em-up games, and I don't have all the newest systems.  However, I CRANK Super Mario Bros.

HARD.

I'm talking old school. Almost as old school as you can get: Super NES.
My roommate and I play, a lot.
             Sometimes, we do really well. But, there are days where we do really bad. I mean really
     Bad.

Sometimes, it's for legitimate reasons: like the ghosts are being particularly annoying today; or maybe the little blue dinosaurs in the chocolate mountains are coming at you from everywhere and you forgot how lethal they were; or the wizard is being a bitch... But sometimes the reasons for death are not so legitimate.  Like when you jump
Right
Off
The
             Edge.
Thats a terrible way to go.  It's something that could have been avoided, and you feel stupid after making a mistake like that.  An equally pathetic death is when you run right into a koopa or one of those ugly brown things that never seem to die... or when you frantically try to
catch
your Yoshi, and you slam into one of those evil football players. (I think those guys are the worst, especially when they multiply,
                                               gross).

My roommate and I joke around all the time about how
                           super-cool
     we are
for playing
                      nintendo.
But, there's something that has to be admitted here: I get really
                                                                                                     ugly
                                            when I play nintendo.  Have you ever been in the same room as your father when he's watching hockey or football?  If you have, then you'll know that he yells at the TV (at least, mine does)... but it's more than that. See, he's not just welling AT the
Television,
they are screaming at the referees for making a bad call, or at the players for being stupid and letting the other guy intercept a pass.  Do you ever notice how foolish he is for doing that?
Well, times that by about 800 and then you've got me.
    I get
mental
   when I play nintendo. I scream. I yell. I swear a lot. I make awkward sounds that probably shouldn't emerge from the mouth of a woman. I bet I make really ugly faces... but thats the reality of it.  The worst part of it is, I do it when I do well too.

Doing well in Mario is a fantastic feeling.  It leaves you with a sense of accomplishment and fulfillment.  Beating a boss is amazing.  Completing a ghost house imparts dignity. Finding a secret passage you didn't realize was there before is
epic.
Pwning the wizard empowers me to scream "joyful profanities" (if there IS such a thing) at the television.

What if life was LIKE Super Mario?

                                                 CAN YOU EVEN IMAGINE IT?!?!?!?!?!?!

Think about it... There would be
Theme music
           everywhere
you went.  You could grow and shrink at any possible time depending what kind of mushrooms or flowers you ran through.  People would be zipping through the skies. You would hold onto your pennies.  Dinosaurs would still roam the Earth. There would be no questioning whether or not ghosts existed.

You would
Never
Really...                                                                 Die.

Eating the green mushrooms would give you an extra year.  If you go to the Forest of Illusion, there's a level where you can get A LOT of lives.  If you play it over and over again, you can get as many as you want.  Can you imagine something like that? People would NEVER die. They'd just keep going back for more life.
              talk about a fountain of youth.

If you didn't know about all the ways you can earn lives, and you received a
                GAME OVER,
You start from where you left off.

Huh... interesting.