12 Days of Mugger - Day 6

Mugger on a Stick

There was a time when Mugger played a lot of Nintendo 64. James Bond’s GoldenEye was his game of choice. A game of espionage and cappin’ a bunch of MoFo’z with any number of weapons of individual destruction.

We would play late until the night falling asleep on the controllers. It was fun and we played with as many as three or four people at a time. The Nintendo 64 console was at least 2 or 3 systems removed from the most current console, but it worked for us. One day I got a box from Mugger shipped UPS to our apartment in Burbank. I opened it up and it was a Nintendo 64 that he bought on Ebay for Kristen and I. It had one game. James Bond GoldenEye. He would typically beat up on us with consistency, even with his skill level set high and ours on low to intermediate,,,,and I think he wanted us to get some practice in before the next marathon. He wanted us to train and push him a little in his pursuit to be the best GoldenEye assassin he could be.

The point of this story relates to a letter and photo we got from Mugger not long after his deployment to Iraq thanking us for the hours of training on the Nintendo 64. You see, he and a Joint Special Operations Unit of specially trained Flight Surgeons had just captured Saddam Hussein and while he couldn’t say much about it or speak for the rest of the Unit, he felt that his skills were only sharpened and refined by the countless hours of late night GoldenEye. So in a small way, Kristen and I (and all of us that played GoldenEye) also assisted in the capture of Saddam Hussein.

Meanwhile back at the ranch, life was moving along as normal as possible when you have a family member stationed overseas. We had our gatherings, reunions and graduations etc, but the Lawrence Family never showed up without their Mugger-on-a-Stick. All group photos where taken with a life size 2 dimensional photo of Mugger’s Face glued on some backboard and taped to a paint mixing stick.

There were concerns that Mugger was going to miss AJ’s wedding last summer when he was called to Afghanistan, but fortunately his deployment was delayed and he was able to be there as AJ’s Best Man.

Not taking any chances though, my Uncle Weiner and AJ started work in the garage on a more advanced Mugger on a Stick. A life size three-dimensional Mugger robot prototype. This robot would serve the same purpose as the Mugger on a stick, but it would be bigger and better and more technological with AJ’s software programming advancements and Weiner’s directorial skills. This Mugger robot would come equipped with a mechanical catapult spring loaded-arm capable of pitching bean bags or bocce balls up to 25 feet in the backyard. It would be able to speak simple Mugger catch phrases like, “Got Crabs” , “Who needs a Natty?” and "Yeah Dad, that would be really neat.”

Truth is we’ve all grown accustomed to Robot Mugger here on the East Coast and we’ll hate to see him shut down once the real Mugger and his new bride move back here. Maybe we’ll teach Robot Mugger to play GoldenEye and send him to Portsmouth with the newlyweds.