I do believe parties can take two months of planning.
You know, to get them to run, it's a successful day.
Yeah, I did lots of baking last night, so I've made three of the cupcakes, so that's
the other thing I've made, so I'll bring those all in the basket in there, and I made a red
cheesecake, so it's like a chocolate Texas sheet cake event.
That's his pinball initials, R-E-G, Robert Emilio, Ganyo, so we call it the red sheet
cake.
I mean, I only do this once a year, all the machines on, but each of the breakers, I've
actually put them on 20 amp breakers.
They worked last year with 10 machines, now it's about 13, but we should be okay.
Final tournaments are really challenging to win.
You have to know how to play on all styles of games, from old to new to mid-age.
I remember playing them when I was like five years old, almost in kindergarten.
It was just so much fun, and I liked the music, the lights, everything, kind of almost combined
it all together kind of thing.
I think you have a natural passion for a certain thing, if you want to get good at something.
You have to feel that passion in you.
It feels amazing when you can just hit everything you want.
To me, I call that being in the zone.
I think of nothing but being in that zone.
Don't think of anything else at all.
It's one of the most amazing feelings in the world, actually.
You feel all happy inside.
I think I was meant to play with them all.
Robert was born almost exactly two years after my oldest child, and I felt really good, but
he was kind of a floppy baby.
He used to just spin everything he'd spin himself, he'd spin objects.
If something wasn't spinning, he'd make it spin.
He'd gravitate to exit signs and try to reach exit signs and buttons and light switches
and stuff.
He wouldn't play with any of the toys.
He was always going for all these mechanical things.
All these red flags were at the back of my head, but he was also a very, very cute baby.
He looked so good, like people said, oh, lots of boys don't talk to like four or five.
I used to think maybe I'm just over-imagining things or over-analyzing things.
He eventually got, by the time he was three, he got diagnosed with autism and a mild mental
handicap, and we were told he may never learn to talk or read or write.
I went to Gladstone High School in East Vancouver, and I'd always go to Wally Burgers.
I took Robert there just for the hamburger.
I loved the hamburgers, and I thought he'd like them too, and I think it was about five
years old, and it was a game in the corner, Twilight Zone.
He got on this soapbox, and he started flipping away those flippers, and I think that was
really the first time he ever played pinball.
He was four or five years old, and then after that, he was hooked on them.
We, my dad, feel like we're on a pinball tour, kind of like Guns N' Roses, one time dead
in the U.S., and this is feeling like a concert tour, almost, with pinball.
Like I feel like I live on the road away from home a lot of the year.
It seems there's probably like 30 weeks of weekends with pinball competing, which is
quite a lot during the year.
I want to become a legend like he's all one did in the States.
He has the most complete, little work of all.
And there's many balls going on once he can think, like he adapts.
Andre is a wild type to me.
Andre's dream is like complete on the fly, yet amazingly accurate.
I like that guy.
Kaley George is a well-researched type player.
Me and Kaley are the two highest ranked players in the Pacific Northwest together.
Andy Rosa, I like him for his hairstyle.
Andy Rosa, I'd say, is one of the best nudges out there.
Like his reaction time is incredible.
Jorgen has complete flipper skills and accuracy.
He's a very serious player, and he's actually a very skilled poker player back in this country.
Alina Walters is really good at shooting the ramps, and also shooting narrow shots.
And she's probably one of the only women ranked in the top 100 in pinball ranking.
When he first started off, it was like a lot of social coaching, like remember to go shake
the hand, remember to say congratulations, work on being a good loser, but also a good
winner.
Sometimes I can feel overstimulating kind of thing, because it's like so much information
my brain has to process.
But I want to be treated just as a typical individual who doesn't have autism.
Going to my final game, congratulations, that's awesome.
One of the features of many people with autism is that when they're interested in something,
they're really interested in something, so they learn the rules, they like to read about
it, if it's something they can practice, they'll practice, and so he does have that as well.
He probably plays more pinball than most people as well.
I think he does have other interests, but that group of people, they don't mind talking
that length about pinball or about my new details of pinball, because they kind of get
that too.
They're just as interested in pinball as he is.
I think he likes that, I think he likes the fact that a lot of players look up to him
or they ask him for advice because of how good he is.
They appreciate Robert, and Robert probably feels a lot more at ease with them as well.
People will respect you for who you are if you just behave good and have a good attitude.
I would say best friends are hard to come by.
They are.
They are.
Of course.
They're really hard to find.
What do you get from them?
Attitude is what people seem to always remember best.
I would love to achieve world ranking number one one day in pinball, but that's going to
be quite a ways deal to climb.
Ranking number one in the world in anything, that's a long work in progress right now,
but you can't really get anything you want just from standing there.
You can't expect it to fall from the sky or something.
It takes a lot of determination, passion, and just really, really wanting this so much
that you'll do everything in your power possible to get it.
You have to keep that discipline no matter how frustrating and how slow it's going to
feel to you.
We all have to slowly build our way up right through the end.
