there is very little evidence of Mario's skill as a plumber

A plumber? Really?

According to the instruction booklet for Super Mario Brothers, Mario is a plumber. He was working on some kind of plumbing job in Brooklyn when he got sucked down into the Mushroom Kingdom, where he proceeded to jump on pretty much everything he could find. It's a very noble thing for Mario to do: leave behind his life in the real world to eat a bunch of shrooms and chase around a princess. I don't have any problems with Mario's lifestyle. The only problem I have with Mario's story is that there is absolutely no evidence that he has any skill as a plumber at all.

Okay, there's a couple things that I could maybe give him. Throughout the Mario series, he's had to deal with a lot of pipes. I guess that his affinity for warping through pipes could be attributed to some kind of understanding of them. Also, he wears plumber's overalls. So I can give him the benefit of the doubt with the pipes and the clothing. That part of his story is leads us to believe that he is a plumber.

But then again, couldn't anyone buy overalls? And plumbers aren't the only ones who work with pipes. Engineers work with pipes. Janitors work with pipes. Potheads work with pipes. But, okay, even if I give him the clothes and the pipes, I don't think that's enough.

Look at his origin story. What kind of plumber gets sucked down a pipe that he's working on? I mean, I think that the first thing you'd want to do if you're doing some plumbing is to turn off the water pressure, turn off any kind of suction, to keep that from happening. I'm not even a plumber, but if someone called me up, complaining about their toilet, and said "Everything in the bathroom is getting sucked down into an alternate dimension," the first thing I would tell them to do is turn off the water. It just seems obvious.

I'm not saying Mario isn't skilled. The man can jump like nobody's business. If there were some kind of jumping contest, I would put the money on him, no doubt. I just think jumping has very little to do with plumbing. I could be wrong. I don't work in the field. I've just never called a plumber to fix my backed-up sink and heard him say, "I hope you have high ceilings in your bathroom, because I'm going to need to jump, like, sixteen feet into the air."

Over the years I've seen Mario do a lot of things. He plays golf. He plays tennis. He plays baseball. Hell, he's even refereed boxing. And though all of these endeavors involve pipes in some vague, unexplained way, they don't really inspire much confidence in his plumbing ability. He can hit all the amazing drives-down-the-fairway-trailing-rainbows that he wants; until he can get a showerhead to stop dripping after the water is turned off, he's not really showing much professionalism.

Look at Mario's tools. Mushrooms, feathers, raccoon outfits -- what do any of these have to do with gaskets or faucets? Come on, man, show me a wrench! A pipe-snake! Anything! Who's going to hire a plumber thatshows up at their house with a toolbox that has nothing in it but a tin whistle, a flower, and a strange-looking mushroom? That just screams lawsuit.

I want to believe Mario. I want him to pop on back from the Mushroom Kingdom, walk into a non-pixelated bathroom, whip out some washers and a gasket wrench, and fix a leaky faucet. The evidence just isn't there to support it. Until Mario gets a little more reliable, I'm going to have to leave him to the princess-saving and hire someone else.