Mario Galaxy Orchestra "Overture"

My mother-in-law bought Wii a few years ago as a fun Christmas present for me and my wife.

But honestly, having little kids, it was pretty rare that we took the time to play it ourselves.

Feeling bad about it gathering dust, I did some research last winter on good Wii games for kids 3 to 5.  Santa delivered a copy of "Ready, Set, Grover" to our house.

The game is cute, and very, very basic.  It's also, secretly, a way to get the kids to exercise.  Because Elmo and Grover are doing things like jumping over mailboxes and touching their toes and running in place and such.

The kids liked it.  But it did make them curious about the other games on the shelf.

I set them up to play "Epic Mickey" but they quickly got frustrated, as the motor skills necessary are way above a small kid's level.

"You do it, Daddy."

In short order, watching Daddy or Mommy play Wii became more popular than episodes of "Curious George."  The kids will literally sit for an hour and watch one of us play a game, offering helpful back-seat-Wii-ing instructions like, "You shouldn't have let that bad guy get you, Daddy."

"Epic Mickey" actually became kinda stressful in the later stages of the game, and that's when Mario returned to my life.

The first real arcade game I ever played was a knock-off version of Donkey Kong called "Crazy Kong."  When I was 11, my friend Jay Armstrong and I would ride our bikes all the way down to the D.A.V Hall---because it was one of the few places in town with an arcade game---with a few quarters, to play.  Years later, I got Donkey Kong for Atari, and played it endlessly.

For that last month or so, my son wakes up and the first thing he says is "Daddy, can you play Super Mario Galaxy?"

Mario is now in space and there is some complicated back-story about a princess and Luma creatures and the universe and I don't worry too much about that.  I just run around and collect coins and jump on the heads of bad guys.  And whenever I complete a level, my boy does his "we completed a level!" dance.  To some typically ear-wormy Mario music.

How ear-wormy?  Even at the dinner table, my boy is humming it.  Me too.

So it wasn't a big surprise that when we asked him what he wanted to be for Halloween, he said "Super Mario!"

My wife made the costume---it came out pretty darn good.

And (now that the Sox have won the World Series) there will be two of us losing a mustache tomorrow.

Hear the song on Youtube.