Uncle Scrooge loves Money.

He loves other things, too, like his nephew Donald and his three grand-nephews, but his affection for those guys has to be dragged out of him with much effort and hollering.

His love of money, though, that is on full display at all times. He looks at it like he wants to get it pregnant so it can give birth to Money II.

On the Disney show and in the Nintendo Tape that’s based on it, Scrooge’s nemesis is a fellow Scot named Flintheart Glomgold. He’s almost as much Billionaire as Scrooge, a fact which naturally eats at both of their self-worth at all times. It’s their sole motivation for doing anything.

My favorite thing about the game is you can hop around on Scrooge’s cane like a pogo stick, which is very cool. I love to pogo around the stages and hop on peoples heads so their jewels and ice cream cones pop out of them.

One of the boss characters, the sultry duck sorceress Magica De Spell, was even kind of pretty, before she transformed into a vulture. This opinion was my most closely guarded secret in those days. I was cured of this opinion when Dad found my journal with her drawn all over it with hearts circling her head.

“Mr. Robbie De Spell” scrawled on the inside cover was a particularly damning detail indeed.

The first time I ever played Duck Tales was in February of 1990 at my new friend Aaron’s house. It was his birthday, and a few of his buddies and me were invited to stay over for a night of pizza, movies, and video games.

Aaron and I bonded during Library class over ninja turtles and Nintendo tapes a few weeks previous. It turned out we liked a lot of the same things, and our senses of humor matched up closely, too. I liked him and we got along really well at school, but I was still surprised when he invited me over for the sleepover.

I didn’t know the other guys very well, our common link was our friendship with Aaron. They all lived in the same rural subdivision and bussed in for school. At thirteen, I was a year younger than most of them.

The sleepover was a night of many important firsts for me. The first time I saw the movies RoboCop and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, played the Duck Tales game, and the first time I ever faked a heart condition to be excluded from roughhousing with other boys.

The moment I walked into Aaron’s house on that cold February evening felt like I was stepping onto a different planet. A big screen TV sat against one wall with a comfortable looking couch and leather chairs surrounding it. The carpet didn’t even have any bald spots. In fact, it was so thick my feet sank into it. Even in just my socks I was half afraid I would get in trouble for standing on it.

My friend Bill’s house was nowhere near as big and nice as this, but he bragged about it all the time. Aaron never did.

What I really liked about Aaron’s friends, who were all skater and heavy metal kids, is that they were never interested in ruining anyone’s day. They contented themselves with more honorable pursuits like mastering The Ollie Jump and congratulating each other on shaving the sides of their heads.

I was nervous at first because I only really knew Aaron, but the guys were really funny and cool so I made the Command decision to stand down to Yellow Alert.

After introducing us to his mom and step dad, who were really nice, Aaron led us upstairs to his bedroom. It was bigger than any living room I’d ever seen. There was a couch in there. A couch, in a bedroom. I’d never even heard of something like that. It was only the beginning.

He had play sets from G.I. Joe, He-Man, Transformers, and more just piled up in a corner. I mean the big, expensive sets. The ones I would stare at in the Sears Wish Book every Christmas, knowing to not even circle any of them because there was no way Santa was bringing one to the Grimm house. Omega Supreme was just tossed into a pile of stuff in the corner. THE Omega Supreme. Lying there like he was just some guy.

My eyes darted back and forth as I clocked treasure after treasure, my mind barely able to keep up cataloging each one. My breath caught in my throat when my eyes stumbled across a familiar but giant shape on the floor. It was a shape I only recognized because I’d spent years ogling it in catalogs and on toy store shelves. Those tiny photos did not prepare me for the overwhelming size and majesty of the thing.

“Oh my God, you have the USS Flagg!? Can we play with it?” I had never seen The Flagg in person before, I couldn’t believe he owned it. The seven-foot long G.I. Joe aircraft carrier cost over a hundred dollars at Hills.

He’d never even mentioned it to me, I couldn’t believe it. My body felt like it was being magnetically pulled toward the thing. Probably my very first encounter with physical lust if you don’t count this one confusing dream I had about the Autobot Ultra Magnus in 1985.

“Oh dude,” he said. “that’s boring.”

I stood there while my mouth opened and closed, the words refusing to spill out. He may as well have just slapped me across the mouth. The idea that The USS Flagg was boring was simply a statement my brain refused to process. Images of Scrooge swimming around in unlimited riches popped into my head.

“Yeah, you’re right, that is boring” I said, probably a little too robotically. I hoped was selling my “awesome toys are for idiot babies” attitude nonetheless.

“So, what should we do?” My eyes didn’t leave The Flagg as I asked.

“This!” he cried. With that, he crashed into me, tackling me to the ground. I yelped loudly and the other guys started laughing, then piled on after him. Headlocks, arm bars, and figure four leg locks soon followed, accompanied by raucous laughter.

These Rowdy Boys were squirming into all sorts of tangled configurations atop me and I was quickly becoming mired in the familiar quicksand of panic.

My mind fumbled for an eject cord, any eject cord. In the chaos, my brain latched onto one and yanked it.

“Oh no! My heart!” I yelled as loud as I could.

To their credit, the guys immediately scattered and helped me up.

“Jesus, dude, are you alright?” Aaron asked.

“Yeah, I’m okay. Sorry, I have a heart problem and its starting to hurt. Maybe I should sit on the couch and rest for awhile.” (Still unbelievable he had one in his room.)

Aaron said sure, and he apologized for tackling me and that he didn’t know about my heart. I said it was no big deal, I just have to be careful about stuff like that. We spent the rest of the evening eating snacks and watching movies on Aaron’s VCR.

The evening sped by as we lost ourselves in the worlds of Indiana Jones and Robocop, both of which tied for best movie I’d ever seen. After they were over Aaron’s parents bid us their goodnights and don’t stay up too lates, and our attention turned to the clock on Aaron’s wall.

When the clock struck midnight and we were reasonably certain Aaron’s parents were asleep, it was time for Bat Club to at last swing into action.

Bat Club was the secret society Aaron and the other guys had founded the previous summer during the all-consuming Batman Fever which gripped America. I hoped to pass the trials for entrance myself someday. (Jumping from the second floor of Aaron’s garage onto the trampoline below.)

Bat Club + Robb crept out of the house and into the chilly night air. We started toward the nearby Veteran’s Park. According to Aaron’s Swatch it was 12:40 am when we arrived. The park had been closed for hours by that point, and the only people violating the park hours sign besides us were a young couple. They were sitting on a bench under one of the park shelters, engaging in what I would describe as “desperate” or even “frenzied” face sucking.

Making out wasn’t a big deal to me, I’d seen it plenty of times on Cinemax in high quality movies like Moonstruck and Dirty Dancing.

So yeah, I was NO stranger to the way of Making Out with a Lover. Just another regular ass day for me, so what. I forced myself not to keep glancing at them to silently prove my worldliness and hoped the other guys noticed.

As we walked along the gravel road that wound its way through the park, we noticed a third party that we hadn’t seen before. An older man standing alone in the grass.

His back turned to us, illuminated only by moonlight, he was facing the young lovers as they sloppily invaded one another’s mouths. His right hand was moving in this weird, jerky motion.

We shot each other quick wide-eyed glances. Clearly, he was “pulling seed” while watching the couple grind their tongues and teeth against each other.

Kissing in movies usually made me feel kind of shy so I watched the make out parts from my peripheral vision, but I was pretty sure that was the technique they were using.

Eric, second in command of Bat Club and teenage drumming prodigy with a half-shaved skateboarder haircut, started laughing his ass off and pointed at the guy. Before anyone could stop him he shrieked, “HEY, THAT GUY IS JACKING OFF AT YOU,” to the couple. The lovers, and the (alleged) Pleasureman all turned to look at us.

Whelp, bye! I was fucking GONE. I was already riding a jagged spike on the Panic Graph due to being out after curfew, but had been maintaining enough casual normality that the other guys didn’t notice.

Eric’s shriek of “HEY THAT GUY IS JACKING OFF AT YOU” was Too Much. Yellow Alert skipped Red and went straight to Warp Core Breach Imminent and I was off like a fucking shot.

My eyes were focused on the dark horizon I was racing for, so I didn’t see the low-hanging PARK CLOSED sign we'd stepped over on the way in. I ran straight into its chain, tripping and sending myself sailing through the night air and face-first into the gravel on the other side.

Certain The Pleasureman was breathing or (more likely) sexually panting down my neck, I all but Scrooge-pogoed back to my feet. I didn’t dare look back as I scrambled to regain my footing and spat the gravel out of my mouth. Without even obsessively checking myself for injuries, I resumed my flight.

Bat Club’s collective laughter faded behind me as I disappeared into the night.

Laugh all you want, dickheads, for I will not be the one to die or just as likely have seed pulled on me at the Veteran’s Memorial park.

I blasted full-speed all the way back to Aaron’s house, padded silently up to his room, and collapsed on the floor. I gulped down air until I my breathing evened out and the sound of rushing blood in my ears subsided.

Sinking into that plush carpet of Aaron’s bedroom floor, trying to catch my breath, I was certain I’d Blown It. My adrenaline started to recede, and I realized what my fear had likely just robbed me of.

I was going to join an actual Bat Club and be a part of a cool, friendly gang of boys. But it was all gone, evaporated in an instant because I’d let the mask slip, and now they could see me for what I was.

I rolled onto my side and bunched my knees to my chest, prepared for a good cry when I spotted the USS Flagg sitting there. Sitting there all alone. With me. My tears retreated back into my eyeballs as I rolled onto my hands and knees.

“Well, at least I got to be in Bat Club for a little while and have cool friends for a night,” I thought to myself as I crawled towards the gigantic aircraft carrier.

I mollified myself with The Flagg while I waited for the guys to return and make fun of my cowardice until bed time. It was as glorious as I had always imagined it would be. It wasn’t quite worth the cost of all my new friendships being flushed down the shit hole, but it was still pretty good.

When the door finally opened and the guys filed in, muffling their giggling when they saw me, I stole a quick glance over at the USS Flagg. Satisfied that I’d left it as I’d found it, leaving no trace of the subdued fun we’d had together, I resigned myself to the inevitable mockery. It was fine, this was well-traveled territory. Just survive until it was time to go home and I could lay in bed all day Sunday watching Star Trek.

To my complete surprise, the mockery never came.

“Hey man, that was a sick face plant,” Eric said with a grin on his face. He tossed his head so his long hair flipped behind his back. He slapped my back and laughed. I waited for the rest of it, wondering how he was going to finish me off. But Eric didn't follow up with a mean punchline or a punch to my nuts. He just stood there.

It dawned on me that I might be in on the joke, and somehow not the butt of it.

“Yeah, I didn’t wanna risk getting jacked off on, you know? The only guy who gets to jack off on me is me.”

Nothing wrong with a little self-deprecation to shore up defenses, just in case of a surprise attack.

The guys laughed. "Dude," Eric said. "You're hilarious."

I didn't know how to react to the compliment, so I just smiled. Blood was rushing in my ears and it was suddenly hard to breathe.

Aaron chuckled a little then asked me how I was and if my heart was okay. I told him I was alright.

Convinced that I really was okay and not just lying, Aaron told me that after I ran off the couple explained to them that the guy wasn’t actually cranking it. He had some kind of physical problem that made his arm make jerky movements, and it was normal for him to take walks in the park at night so they were used to him being around. Apparently, people making out was no big deal to him, either.

I guess he had seen Moonstruck, too.

By the time my mom arrived to pick me up, I was Transylvania-deep into Duck Tales and about to fight Magica De Spell, the aforementioned cutie pie of The Duckburg Occult Society. I reluctantly put the controller down on the floor and went downstairs to get ready to leave.

After Mom chatted with his parents for a few minutes, we told everyone goodbye and thanked them for letting me stay over. Aaron suddenly spun around and ran up the stairs.

My mom ushered me out the front door and we were halfway to the car when Aaron caught up with us.

“Here dude, you can borrow this.”

He pressed the Duck Tales cartridge into my hand. He’d only just gotten it a week ago.

I stood there looking at its colorful front label that showed Scrooge cradling a giant gem while escaping via helicopter from the pursing Beagle Boys, Glomgold’s thieving henchmen.

I couldn’t believe it.

“Just give it back to me whenever. Later!”

With that, he ran back into the house. We got in the car and I put my seat belt on.

“They seemed nice.” Mom said. She turned the key and the engine rumbled to life.

“Yeah,” I said, looking down at the Duck Tales cartridge. It may as well have been a gold brick. I looked at the passenger side mirror and watched Aaron’s big, fancy house recede into the distance.

“They are.”