Boop.

I played Super Mario Bros. in the Godfather's Pizza my family went to most Sundays for our weekly family outing. While waiting for pizza, I'd play Mario and I don't think I ever got any good at it.

Then at some point we got a Nintendo at home. And I played Mario. I still don't think I ever got any good at it. We didn't buy many games for the Nintendo because we preferred our Sega system, on which we played Alex Kidd.

(Sidenote: Another favorite was Bubble Bobble, but I can't remember if I played that at a friend's house or if we owned it.)

Anyway, back to Mario. When you're in one of the castles at the end of a level, I can't remember which world, you have to travel on the correct path or it won't let you move on to the next area. But you don't know this at first. So you're just walking along and think, ah, it looks safe to walk along the bottom, so you do. But then when you get past a certain point, you hear a little sound that I can only describe as "boop." It's a negative sound, this you know, but it's not flashy and you think it's maybe a glitch. So you keep walking and you realize that you've seen this area before and nothing is happening. Boop. Oh, I get it, I'm doing something wrong. Finally you understand that you should be walking on the top, not the bottom, and it lets you move on to the end-of-level boss.

This is all to say that I was driving around Katy this week for work reasons that aren't important to the story. As I'm coming back to civilization on I-10 East, I notice a Jared jewelry store (anyone else immediately reminded of Jared the Subway guy when they see these stores?). Then, about ten seconds later, I see another Jared jewelry store in the same spot that I saw the past one.

Boop.