Like many other young professionals, I can count the amount of hours a week I have for gaming on one hand. In between working two jobs, entertaining a significant other, and trolling video game message boards, there isn’t much time to spend on 40+ hour RPGs.

My gaming has been limited to ten-minute, portable bursts. Like a young boy slowly collecting skee ball tickets until he finally has enough to exchange for a prize, I cobble together dozens of these sessions and somehow manage to finish a game, eventually.

It was only natural that I’d turn to a GameFAQs walkthrough when I started playing Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow. Little did I know that it would lead to my doom! (not really)

Though I am loathed to admit it, GameFAQs has been a blessing. I don’t have time to fight a boss four times so I can learn how to dodge his attack pattern. It’s late in the evening, and I have deadlines to meet! Two hours of trying to figure out what special item I need to access new parts of the map? Naw man, I gotta get paid.

I usually print out these guides so that I won’t need to be tethered to a computer when I find time to play. It’s a convenient practice, but I have a tendency to jumble or even lose the pages sometimes. Staples and paperclips, though useful, never seem to be available when I print out these walkthroughs.

So that’s how a few pages of my Dawn of Sorrow guide were mixed in with the forms I’d dropped off at my mother’s office. When I came by the next day to pick up the signed forms, she was noticeably quiet.

It wasn’t until when I got home that I noticed my mom had returned the missing Castlevania tips. She had even scribbled a note on the guide after having read a few paragraphs. I’ve transcribed her words to make it more legible for you, but I left my mother’s old-asian-lady grammar intact.