Remember the good old days when your mom would drop you off at the mall entrance with fifteen bucks for food and drinks, and expects you to keep yourself busy at the mall for three hours while she and your aunts/sisters go out shopping. You wonder around the mall for about fifteen minutes and then hunger kicks in. You head to the food court and scope out for what food that will fulfill your appetite.

You are in luck! You see a Taco Bell and head straight for it. You buy a couple of tacos and a soda. You finish your delicious meal and buy a refill for you soda for twenty-five cents, or if you are feeling dangerous at the time, you wait for the attendant of the Arby’s next door is not paying attention, and you go use their soda machine to refill your drink. Then off you go to the only place in the mall that you can go to where you can kill the remaining two hours, and spend the rest of your money: The Mall Arcade.

You see an arcade machine with a small crowd watching as two players are battling it out. The game is Street Fighter II. You go over to the change machine and exchange your bills for quarters. You head over to the crowd, and carefully walk up to the arcade machine, making sure you do not get in the player’s way, and put up your quarter behind the line of quarters already up near the top of the machine. You make a mental picture of where your coin is in line, remembering which quarter is yours. You then join the crowd and watch the matches in hopes that you discover something new. “Winner stays, Loser pays.” The winner continues playing without having to pay more quarters, while the loser leaves, and the next person in line goes up and tries to beat the new “champion”.

Twenty minutes go by and the player ahead of you just lost his match. You look up and see that your quarter is up next. You step up and grab the quarter from up top, and insert the quarter into the coin slot with another quarter from your pocket. You press the start button on your side of the machine. “Here comes a new challenger!” flashes on the screen, and you are at the character select screen. You select your character and the match is about to begin. Here is your time to shine. Your time to show everyone watching what you are made of. Your time to end your opponent’s ten game winning streak. Your time to begin your own winning streak. Round 1: FIGHT!! Five minutes go by and you get your ass handed to you on a silver platter in two straight rounds. You are defeated, but not discouraged. You step away from the machine and put up another quarter behind the line of quarters again, and the cycle will repeat until you run out of quarters or time is up and your mom is there to pick you up.

I originally wrote this as an intro to my Street Fighter blog, but kinda got carried away with some details, and I ended up splitting the blog into two seperate blogs for your viewing pleasure. You can read the Street Fighter blog here. Moral of the story is… umm… Taco Bell is awesome! Who remembers this crazy dog?