I remember whenever my parents and my siblings and I were completely stuck on a video game, they'd call the coolest babysitter in the world to watch us for an evening and beat the hard levels.

First, he was a guy named John at a time when nobody had ever even heard of a male babysitter. Second, he had bleached hair, piercings and dressed like he'd escaped from one of the music videos with ladies writhing on top of cars in them. (This was despite perfect grades and manners so impeccable he called every female adult 'Ma'am' and every girl 'Miss' and her first name. His parents were friends of mine and they explained that the wardrobe choices and whatnot were privileges in exchange for good behavior.)

And third, he was simply the most exciting human ever to be. He made chainmail. He owned a broadsword. And he could beat every Super Nintendo game in the world, as well as all the Sega ones, and when he got one of the first Playstations, he brought it with him and taught us to play as well. He was the sort of guy that tiny-me would have had a crush on, if I were old enough to reasonably have crushes. (To be fair, I still have a ridiculous thing for chainmail-making, broadsword-owning gamer guys.)

Being ten years old, I was only allowed to make money by raking leaves, shoveling snow and other miscellaneous kid crap. This was around the same time my school did a magazine-subscription sale as a fundraiser, and my little brother and sister and I decided, with infallibly bad kid logic, that what we would do was raise the impossible sum (it was probably something like $20,) and get John a subscription to 'Nintendo Power' for Christmas. We shoveled snow. We mowed lawns. We raked leaves and I overcame my terror of dogs long enough to walk the neighbors' demon-possessed Pomeranian for three days when they went on vacation. At last, the great day came, and we asked our Mom to accept our jar of change and bills in exchange for a check to get John his magazine. With the rest of the money, we bought her a large chocolate bar.

I have no idea if 'Nintendo Power' was a good gift or not, now that I think about it. The Playstation came out within a year or so, as well as the Dreamcast and a bunch of other, better systems, and John eventually got another job that meant he had less and less time for us, but even if it was a hopelessly out-of-style or uncool thing for us to have given him, he acted like we were awesome for thinking of it, let alone raising the money all by ourselves.

He thanked us with big hugs and a piggyback ride each, then gave us our present -a Super Nintendo game cartridge each. Never mind that they were functionally pretty much hand-me-downs from a bigger kid (I think he was sixteen or so,) to a smaller one, it was a wonderfully kind gesture that I've never forgotten. I still have a working SNES and that 'Mystic Quest' cartridge. And there were times he'd bring the latest issue to our house and refer to the tips section, or, more typically, have my baby sister practice her reading-out-loud while he followed her instructions with the controller. I still have happy memories from that time.

John is apparently a radiologist somewhere now, and I'm a grownup who hasn't bought a console game since college. 'Nintendo Power's passing is just another piece of my childhood slipping away. I wonder which of the walkthrough-and-tips websites I'll be referring to, or whether there will be a cool gamer of a neighbor kid to be a level-beating hero to my first kid.

I wonder if it'd be appropriate to test a prospective sitter with 'Battletoads.'