The King Tide

Thursday morning, there were dolphins at the sunrise. I journaled that it was a good sign.

By Thursday night, I was sick.

Friday morning, I skipped the gym but not the sunrise. The thick clouds hugging the horizon meant I wouldn’t see the sun, but I watched the waves curl as I pulled my beach blanket close. Kevin, a fisherman who frequents the pier at dawn, stopped by to tell me we were experiencing a King Tide—an unusually high tide attributed to the full moon that left only a small strip of beach.

Being sick didn’t stop me from learning something new. Though perhaps I should have recognized the metaphor: overwhelming forces beyond my control, leaving me less room to maneuver than usual.

The Gift of a Sick Day

It was a challenging day at school. Every time my sixth graders buzzed with chatter, I felt like my head was underwater. Being patient and gentle felt impossible. I made it through Friday just to spend the weekend sick and uncomfortable.

Due to potential flooding from that King Tide, our district canceled school Monday. A gift of a day to be sick without teaching.

I’m terrible at being sick, particularly because I can’t exercise daily like usual. The general rule is to rest if you have symptoms below the neck, but I cheated with neighborhood walks. Five days of restlessness whispered, “You didn’t get your energy out, Laura Joy.” The cold medication made me irritable. And worst of all, Calista’s homecoming festivities were Friday – carnival, parade, color guard performance. Tony would be there while I’d be home alone, missing these big family moments.

The Controller and the Quest

Tony’s solution? He set me up on the couch with his Nintendo Switch and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.

Link’s avatar was nostalgic, pulling me back to childhood in my parents’ finished basement, playing Ocarina of Time with my brothers. We’d figure things out together, especially when we were sick. If we got stuck, we might find a walkthrough online if the dial-up connection held.

Tony spent an hour teaching me the controller’s navigation before taking Calista to school for the parade. They both love this game, excited I was showing interest in their shared passion.

An hour after they left, I’d become intimately familiar with the “Game Over” screen.

“I’m not smart enough to play this game,” I thought.

When Simple Became Complex

The Zelda of my childhood was comprehensible:

• Linear progression with clear paths forward
• Simple puzzles: push blocks, hit switches, play songs
• Twenty items in inventory
• One joystick, six buttons
• Cross Hyrule Field in two minutes

Breath of the Wild is beautiful chaos:

• Go anywhere, do anything, die immediately
• Fuse, build, cook, with physics puzzles I don’t understand
• Combat styles I can’t master
• A world 100 times larger
• Multiple joysticks, every button does three different things

I googled shrine locations, then died in the mountains because I didn’t have warm clothes yet. This wasn’t the Link and Zelda of my adolescence.

The Wrong Buttons

My fingers kept pressing wrong buttons at wrong times. It wasn’t just learning the game; I needed to learn the controller itself.

Saturday, Sunday, Monday, I played a little each day with Tony’s help while recovering. First, I fought the nagging thought that I was wasting time when there was work to be done. Then, I reminded myself I needed to rest.

I played and insulted myself, wondering if this game was beyond me. The internal dialogue continued: was I really too dumb to play? Or was I being harder on myself than any boss battle could be?

The Real Quest

After three days of wrestling with both the game and my self-criticism, I had a profound realization: I hadn’t challenged myself mentally this way in years.

Not with lesson planning, which I could do in my sleep. Not with writing, which flows naturally. Not with my routines, refined over years of managing bipolar disorder. I’d gotten so good at avoiding failure that I’d forgotten what learning felt like.

Kids die in video games a hundred times and laugh. Adults see one “Game Over” screen and think we’re stupid. Is it possible the true hero’s quest wasn’t beating the shrines, but rather accepting the learning curves get steeper as we age—not because we’re less capable, but because we’re a little less willing to be beginners.

What the King Tide Knew

I didn’t beat the game this week, and probably won’t for a month of Sundays and sick days. I barely made it through four shrines. Still, somewhere between the King Tide and the complicated controller, between missing homecoming and making peace with Game Over screens, I remembered something else from childhood basement days: growth requires frustration. Mental challenge means being bad at something first, however uncomfortable that might be.

The dolphins Thursday morning were a good sign. Not because anything got easier, but because that Game Over screen became something else… not failure, but proof I’m trying something hard enough to fail at.

I saved a screenshot of it. This glowing orange admission that I’m forty-two, sick, and terrible at Zelda. Tony laughed when he saw me do it. But I want to remember this feeling… being this bad at something and continuing anyway. It’s been so long since I’ve given myself permission to be incompetent at anything.

The tide will go back out. The congestion will clear. And eventually, I’ll remember which button is which. But the lesson about challenging myself, about being gentle with my learning curve? That’s the real screenshot worth saving.