In high school, my cousins came to visit, and one of them brought his Nintendo 64 with four controllers and Mario Kart 64. It was excellently fun. Mostly, I played Bowser and Yoshi. (They're green.) My feeling was that Yoshi was capable of going faster, but Bowser was easier. I tended to over steer when playing Yoshi, because he was just too responsive.

A few years later when I finally got around to learning to drive, I completely freaked out my mom by announcing, after finishing my very first circuit of the chosen parking lot, that our car looked like it should drive like Bowser but actually drove like Yoshi. It was a big tank of a Ford Crown Victoria, but it was also one of the most responsive cars you could find. It would practically drive itself if you let it.

Anyway, a few days ago, Winterson got it in his head that he simply had to have a Nintendo 64. So, he camped out the Craigslist adds until he found a reasonable deal on a Nintendo 64 with four controllers (bizarrely, not the green one), and a decent selection of games: two Zelda, two James Bond, and Mario Kart. As it has been many years since I last played Mario Kart, I started off on Bowser. However, I was surprised last night when I finally tried Yoshi out again to find that I now find driving Yoshi much easier than driving Bowser.

Could my practice driving that Crown Victoria have improved my Mario Kart playing?