Chop wood and carry water

I had an interesting moment playing pinball recently. I had just found this new Godzilla machine at a place near me that isn’t a pinball place. They just have one machine, so it rarely gets played, and it’s in great shape. Everything works.

I was playing and having a great game, and it went out the right outer lane. That allowed me to do this maneuver that I’ve gotten really good at, where I shove the machine hard to the left, bash it off the metal plate at the back of the machine as I’m shoving it hard to the right, so that it pops the ball up as I hold down the left flipper and cradle it back onto the right flipper. It looks insanely cool when I do it. But it’s terrible for the machine. It’s the kind of thing the tilt warning exists for, except they’re so forgiving now that you can hit the ring. Each time you hit the ring, it says danger. This move, I definitely hit the ring once, and sometimes twice. Never three times, and that’s the magic number you need to tilt. So it becomes danger, and then danger danger, resources to expend.

I had been thinking about it this way to maximize points on my game and get what is essentially an extra ball, because the ball has already drained. I was thinking about doing it on this machine, and when I did it, this was not a pinball place. This is not a place where they’re used to hearing the machine tilting. So people look over to see who is this asshole raging against the pinball machine, except I’m definitely not in a rage. This was a calm maneuver. I’ve gotten so used to doing it that I shift into a stance that’s good for shifting a pinball machine as it’s going in the right outer lane, and then prepare for it. And then sometimes I remember I’ve already done it this ball, and I don’t do it, because I would just tilt. And so I stand back up.

Anyway, as I was doing it in this place, I felt bad about doing it to this machine, because this is the kind of thing that really puts the wear and tear on it. It can disconnect the little things underneath and make it so that one spinner doesn’t register, and on these machines with all these different modes, you want everything to work exactly right. And this one does work exactly right.

This was one more lesson from the universe that even though I now know how to tilt the universe to my will, I shouldn’t. It puts wear and tear on it. So only do it when you really need it. It’s not that I don’t want to execute this cool maneuver again. Maybe I would do it on a game where I’m already having a stellar game and it went out the right outer lane on a third ball, just to keep that game going and do something awesome. But I shouldn’t be tilting the universe all the time like this. I shouldn’t be tilting a pinball machine all the time like this. Save it for when you need it. Chop wood and carry water.