The girl is probably 7 years old, and she's staring up at me with deep, chocolaty eyes conveying an admiration that fills me with the weird, sweet-and-sour mix of pride and humiliation.

"You're good," she says sincerely when my eyes catch hers in between screens.

I smile and mutter "thanks," but I feel like I should respond in some manner that will bridge the 22-year-gap between us and impart upon her some of the wisdom of those two decades that came before her. Simple gratitude for her compliment seems so smug, but everything else I think in the next 1.5 seconds seems condescending or ridiculous.

But then it's too late. Mrs. Pac Man is back in action, and I've got to start nibbling away on the pretzel screen fast if I'm to reach my goal.

Within a month, I will learn the physical agony of losing a loved one and the joy of making a genuine commitment to spend the rest of your life with another person. But right now, all I care about is getting high score on the Mrs. Pac Man machine at Casa Bonita, Denver's oldest and, by far, trippiest theme restaurant.

Casa Bonita -- which gained recent infamy through an episode of Colorado's own TV phenomenon South Park -- has an on-site 30-foot waterfall with cliff-divers that leap from great heights because they're being chased by a man in a gorilla suit. The suit is the same one they had when I celebrated my 8th birthday here, at a table so close to the action that my sopapillas got splashed. It has roving mariachi bands, a haunted house, old Western gun fights and a jail you can lock yourself up in for photos. It also has an arcade, filled with the sounds of shooting space rays and shifting car engines that immediately take anyone my age straight back to 1982.

That era and those sounds hold a lot of wisdom that I could impart to the wide-eyed 7-year-old.

I want to tell her that her generation has gotten the whole arcade-thing all wrong. It's not about the tickets, which buy a key chain or fake spider or ball of slime that bring about 10 seconds of entertainment and are available down the street in vending machines that only charge a quarter, instead of the $10 you spent earning the tickets. This lesson seems especially poignant because of a nearby machine that consists entirely of the "player" rolling a quarter down a ski jump apparatus at a spinning wheel in an effort to get it through a narrow slot that will feed you six tickets. Earlier, I watched my niece roll $3.50 down the slope in under a minute after the gleeful announcement that, one time, she wasted all her money on this game.

I also want to tell my young admirer some sort of after-school message, like that she can be just as good as me at Mrs. Pac Man if she works hard and remains focused. She must keep vigilant guard against the distractions that will keep her from every being a high-score contender: like too many friends, extracurricular activities or a foolish overzealousness toward school assignments

The girl is gone by the time I've cleared the pretzel screen. I look around long enough to wonder where my niece and nephew, who I'm supposed to be looking after, have gone off to. Too late. Next screen. I vaguely hope that my admonition of "Watch Yourselves," made before I slipped my quarter into this machine about 15 minutes ago, will be reasonably effective.

In the end, I get the high score in a single try and find with relief that my niece and nephew haven't been abducted, although the man in the gorilla suit chased the former around a bit. We return to our table, where Pete, my significant other of eight years, is pounding a liter of margaritas with one hand and a bucket of Coronitas with the other, surrounded by the college-aged Japanese exchange students that are the reason for our family's trip to Casa Bonita. When they hear he's my boyfriend, they squeal out loud and start a raucous round of applause as if we just had a successful match on "Love Connection." One girl holds her hands in a heart shape and jumps up and down. Then she's off, with a "Thank You Nice Guy!" to Pete, who has no idea what he's being thanked for but grins from ear to ear before lifting his salted glass.

His mother will die two weeks later with little warning. She was diagnosed with cancer six months ago, and while we realized the gravity of the disease, chemotherapy had been working well and we were optimistic until the day that an infection shut down her respiratory system, binding her to machines that would extend her life by 11 days. Pete would return from France broken-hearted and with something about his eyes that made him look 10 years older. He would also have her engagement ring, which he placed on my finger about a week later, as we stood on a sail-shaped bridge overlooking the city.

We look across at the Union Station, a historic train station that anchors downtown Denver. I've bought a memorial brick there for Pete's mom, and I want to show him where it will be laid. We walk over, taking the first steps of our new lives together, and the light airiness of being in love takes some of the weight off our broken hearts. As we head into the station, with its impossibly high ceilings and ancient Amtrak baggage claims, the ring on my finger seems to symbolize the circle of life. Lessons -- about living life to its fullest, cherishing the people you love every second that you can and expressing yourself in ways you'll never regret -- seem to be dripping from every stone in the quiet, century-old station. I want to channel them all, put them into concise little words that I can share with Pete to make everything OK.

Then I see the station's arcade. Pac-Man! I give my new fiance a squeeze of the hand, and rush over to slip a quarter in the machine and try for the high score.