How sleep and Pizza Hut saved my life (Or, "Confession #2")

Are you ready for this one? (Mom, you may want to not read this. You're going to shake your head in dismay.)

I once called in to work for three days in a row just to help my roommate defeat a playstation game.

Yeah, you read that right. I'm not ashamed to admit it. Well, OK, I am a little. But it was SOOOOO fun! It's like a little guilty pleasure...some people were in the Scott Baio fan club, I was obsessed with Walt Disney World Magical Racing Tour. Here's the story:

First of all, you'll need a little background. When I worked at Walt Disney World, they had this fantastic high school-esque policy regarding call-ins. Your whole hired/fired status worked on a point system (a la demerits). Three points got you a reprimand, and three reprimands within 12 months got you fired. So you got points for different things: being late, leaving early...some things were partial points and some things were whole points. Calling in for a personal day cost you a whole point for each day, but calling in sick only cost you one point for three days in a row. More than three days and you needed a doctor's note (so you couldn't go on vacation and call in sick for 6 days, have just 2 points, and get away with it easily). OK, so knowing that...

I came home from work one day frustrated and tired. My roommate Mindy had rented a Playstation (1, back in the prehistoric days before PS2) from Blockbuster and she had rented a game. As soon as I walked in the door she mauled me jabbering about some game her boyfriend had rented for his playstation that was SOOOOOOOOOOO fun and we had to play it. So I sat down and joined her. Within 5 minutes I was hooked. The game is designed so that you are Disney characters racing go-karts through the rides at Walt Disney World. I think I probably got home that night around 9:30, and we might have gone to sleep around 3am. We left both the Playstation and the TV on lest we lose all the work we'd put in beating different "rides" and levels. We had conquered the first level on each of the rides, but the increasing difficulty was making the second level slow-going. Oh, and we slept on the floor in front of the TV to protect it in case our other roommate, Ali, came home and tried to turn it off. We also wrote her a note telling her not to touch ANYTHING. We were quite serious about this.

Woke up in the morning amidst blankets and pillows and shook Mindy awake. Immediately began working on the game again. Within the hour we realized a power outtage could ruin all our hard work, and paused the game, wrote another note for Ali, and left for Wal-Mart to purchase a memory card (that's right, a memory card for a Playstation we didn't even own). While out, we realized sustinance would be key to our ability to focus. Not wanting to lose precious time, we hit the McDonald's drive through and headed home. A few hours later, when it was time for me to go to work, I decided we'd never conquer the game and find out the "surprise" at the end if I had to waste 8 hours at work. I called in sick (knowing full well we'd never beat the game in just the one day and not wanting to get a reprimand for taking three personal days to beat a video game) and thus it began. The trip to WalMart was the last time I left the house (or the spot on the floor in front of the TV, for that matter) for the next three days. We ordered Pizza Hut when we were hungry, napped in front of the TV when we were tired, and had a fort of pillows and blankets to keep us comfy.

You may ask, why are you admitting this to us, Kristy? Well, a few weeks ago I was checking the news at work and discovered this story. Clearly the man was an amateur. Or Pizza Hut and sleep saved my life. Either way, I had a good chuckle remembering my days of hooky-playing back in O-town. And, I take some satisfaction in the idea that I cheated death. =)

(Mom: if you're still reading...this adventure was not for nothing...Fear Not: we beat the game. You can rest easy now.)