The Hero of Time BFG’s

I grew up in the 80’s, the time period of big hair and leather parachute pants. 1986 must have been the pinnacle for me, because The Transformers Movie came out in theaters, and video games were starting to be popular. In just a few months, I went from playing Super Mario Bros. in arcades to playing it on an NES, with no graphical differences. Until that moment in time, arcade games were superior in every way. On the Atari 2600, games like PacMan, Space Invaders and Asteroids looked like garbage compared to the arcade versions.

So, of course, that was a pivotal moment in time for me. Not long after I get tired of playing Super Mario Bros. to death because I didn’t have to pour quarters into it, another game came out on the NES. It was called Legend of Zelda, and it was different in a lot of ways. Not only was the cartridge bathed in gold, but it came with an internal battery pack inside the cartridge, so you could save data and play it after you turned it off. I still remember the first thing you did in that game. There was a cave on the first screen that you were supposed to walk into, and there is an old man standing between two fires that said, “It’s dangerous to go alone! Take this.” and you can pick up the sword, and go on an adventure. From that opening line, I took that sword and spent the next few weeks exploring the land of Hyrule, upgrading my sword, fighting Octoroks, Moblins, and Darknuts, and eventually fighting Big Bosses, including Ganon who was the Final Boss.

Since then, there have been 21 or so Legend of Zelda games, as well as numerous spin-offs. As such, people started wondering what the lore was behind Link and his relationship with Zelda since then. Nintendo got so many questions about the Link/Zelda timeline, that they released a complete timeline around Link and dubbed him the “Hero of Time”. Basically it was an excuse to allow him to be the “Hero of Time” in dozens of different timelines. It gave them the excuse to allow him to be different people. In other words, there was always a need for Link to appear in all these timelines, and there was always a Zelda and a Ganon. Basically, Link would appear in a timeline when he was needed. He always appeared with little to his name, usually with no memory of how he got there, he would have to chase down the Triforce of Power and the Master Sword, and he would have to defeat Ganon and save Princess Zelda.

I like to think that to my kids, whether they know it or not, I’m the Hero of Time. Not so much because I travel into different timelines to gather Tri-Forces and Master Swords, but because my kids constantly steal my laying on the couch time. From the jump, they both got the talent of not sleeping well through the night, and by extension, I would also not sleep through the night. Other than the first day we brought my daughter home, she never slept through the night. That was the last moment that I slept uninterrupted for a decade. I don’t remember much from 2004-2014, so I’m hoping Dumbledore was nice enough to suck out my memories with his wand and placed them into the Pensieve, because I’d love to go back someday to revisit my memories from that decade.

By then, my daughter was 10 years old and my son was 7, and apparently they wanted more of my time for such insignificant things such as ballet recitals, plays and football games. They also wanted me to revisit my childhood as well, because they brought me back in time, like Link, the Hero of Time, by having me do their Math, English, Science again. I guess they didn’t understand that I already passed all those classes back in 1991, as demonstrated by my high school diploma that’s collecting dust in a box downstairs in my basement. Maybe if I would have tried harder to find my diploma, I could have proved to my kids that I didn’t have to do their homework for them.

Recently, my kids both had incidents where they forgot something, and it was up to me to deliver that something to them. In that way, I’m like Link, doing fetch quests, except mine are for my kids and not some random town villagers. Even though it wasn’t the Hero of Time’s fault, it was up to me to leave work, go to the house, and pick up the item and bring the item to them in a timely manner.

My daughter’s fetch quest happened when she was about 3/4 of the way to the airport for a flight, and realized she’d forgotten her driver’s license. Of course, I was in the middle of performing the world’s most important task at work, when I got the frantic call from her. “Dad, I forgot my ID at home. Can you go to the house and get it, and then bring it up to me?” No one else in the world could have performed the task, so it was up to Mr. Hero of Time to abandon work, race home as fast as I could, find the ID, and race 30 minutes north. I got there, and found her frantically racing to retrieve the ID, while later giving credit to her mom for asking her if she had her ID. Of course. Don’t thank the Hero of Time for driving like a Indy 500 racer to get it to you “on time”.

My son’s fetch quest happened this week when he got home late from school and was running late to his firefighting internship. I had just arrived home for lunch, so he was rushing too fast, and forgot his helmet. We got the call moments later, saying that I forgot to put his helmet in the car, because it was my fault he was running late, and it was my fault that I didn’t put his helmet in the back of the car, instead of him being responsible for it. So I was asked to rush the helmet to him, because if he didn’t have it he couldn’t fight fires. Don’t worry that my lunch was cut short.

My time isn’t valuable, because I’m the Hero of Time. I have the ability to move back and forth through different timelines whenever I feel like it. The problem is that I’m always asked when I don’t feel like it.

I know your time isn’t valuable either, so you should be fine to take a few minutes to view the Bitter Friday Giftures anytime you feel like it.

I grew up in the 80’s…