Fun and Games with Chuck

I love arcades. I love skee-ball. I love shoot-em-up alien games with loud shaking guns and plenty of animated violence. Supermom and I often try to sneak away to something like a Dave and Buster’s establishment and waste a couple of twenty dollar bills on some electronic action.

Why do we think the kids will enjoy the same things? Why do we try to instantly create childhood experiences and ingrain a love for nostalgic things in our toddlers?

I grew to love arcades in middle school. I have never enjoyed giant animatronic mice. I always forget both of these facts and try to take my children to Chuck-E-Cheese’s – Where A Kid Can Be A Kid; And they can contract an illness…and be scarred for life by nightmares of giant mice… and get the pizza shits for the car ride home. Awesome.

Why do I go back?

I have witnessed hamsters in a cage and children in this God-forsaken house of horrors are no different. Is the entire building a homeopathic treatment for ADD? This mini-Vegas of carnival games instantly hypnotizes the most attentive of children. You might as well be leading Hellen Keller around an art museum. Look Hellen this is skee-ball do you want to play?

Why do they only want to ride the teacup and lick every new surface that they see? One of my kids wasted a half cup of tokens by cramming them into a ride that was already activated. A four dollar ride with Chuck-E-Cheese in a red roadster. Thank goodness I got a picture that looks like it was printed via carbon paper and a claw hammer. Nice.

I won’t stop my complaints there. Oh no. The tickets are the worst part. Those little inept hands always tear the one ticket sticking out of the machine into a giant triangle with half still attached.

“Why don’t I get more tickets daddy?”
“Because you are terrible at this, and every, game in this whole place.”
But because fate hates you and likes to watch you suffer, it is guaranteed that you child will hit a random jackpot for 300 tickets so they actual qualify for a prize nice enough to cause indecision.
“Do you want a spider ring or an eraser cap?”
The attendant flings out a plastic spider without verifying that you were making a “Final Answer”.
“No I think she wanted the eraser cap…”
“You have 42 tickets left…”
“How much is a noose?”

But the licking of random surfaces. This I have to include in my ranting. I have lamented this several times before because I don’t understand it.

At. All.

I keep a list of things I’ve seen them lick.

I want to scream at them, “What is broken with you? Do you have a mineral deficiency? Pica? STOP!”

Here is my current list on licking:
1) The floor
2) My arm
3) Toilet paper roll
4) A sister
5) The dog
6) The wall
7) A dirty plate
8) Two rides at Chuck-E-Cheese
9) A window
10) (Very nearly except for my intervention) A toilet seat.
11) A book
12) Their upper lip creating a half moon of chapped skin.
13) A cabinet knob on a lower kitchen cabinet
14) Sunscreen lotion
15) Bug spray

That is nowhere near comprehensive and doesn’t include anything that actually should be licked like ice cream cones or envelopes.

So if you cycle back to Chuck-E-Cheese or some similar place, this post is for you. You’re welcome.

It is totally worth it. Isn't she adorable?

It is totally worth it. Isn’t she adorable?

-Underdaddy to the rescue.

24 comments

  4. I’m on an airplane reading this and laughing my ass off! Other people on this plane think I am mental. And for the record, Chuck-E-Cheese is the seventh circle of hell.

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  5. Funny stuff here. I like your point about assuming kids will like what we like.
    My boys enjoyed C.C. – the games that is but they never liked the rat. Maybe, I should have had them wear gloves – in case other lickers had been there.

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    1. Mine love it but I’m unsure why. We will go back many times I’m sure. They don’t take advantage of the cool stuff and they are terrible at providing cover-fire on the Terminator game. I hope your boys are better wingmen. Thank you.

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      2. Yours sounds just like my oldest two kids. One would kill for tickets and the other just wants to have fun and play. We actually had several little kids giving my girls tickets for the youngest one’s birthday. It gave me hope for humanity to see kid-level kindness.

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  6. An Underdaddy classic! Absolutely hilarious. And sadly true. {sigh} Are you aware of the Chuck E. Cheese coupon offers? At least they offset a teensy bit of the cost so we parents can have that all-important (although artificially induced) win/win feeling that keeps us (partly) sane.

    And that licking thing. What is up with that?! Looking on the bright side, though, think of how strong all those invading germs are making their immune systems. YAY!!

    Fortunately Pebbles has never been a licker. But my youngest granddaughter is. And she drinks toilet water. She also took a bite out of one of her dirty diapers once. We never kiss her on the mouth.

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  7. The only positives of Chuck E Cheese (or however it’s spelled) :

    1. skee-ball (sp? again)
    2. their pizza is fantastic, idk why
    3. the ball pit. no matter how old you are.

    Otherwise, it’s terrifying. Especially the robotic “band” and the guy in the mouse costume which I never fully understood or liked at all. This is why I’m afraid to have children. Just seeing that first picture chilled me to the bone.

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