Big Daddy Paul

Malcolm attended a birthday party at Chuck E. Cheese yesterday for the first time.  We had avoided the place under the guise of “we don’t like small spaces with large amounts of children”, but it was a only a matter of time.  Since Malcolm had not ever been there, we felt a certain need to prepare him for the craziness that was awaiting him.  I said “Chuck E. Cheese is a place where you can play games, eat pizza, and listen to a giant rat sing songs.”  He was so enamored by the first two things on the list, that the last item didn’t set off any alarms.  I could have said pretty much anything after games and pizza and he would have been alright with it.  “Hey Malcolm! We are going to a place where you can play games, eat pizza, and slaughter kittens.  Yay!!!!”

A far cry from the Ms. Pacman heavy arcade that I grew up on, the Chuck E. Cheese that we went to was made up mostly of games of skill which provided tickets.  These tickets could then be traded in for useless plastic pieces of shit.  If you worked really hard at it and saved up your tickets, you could then trade in your tickets for something truly memorable, like a plastic piece of shit with the words “High School Musical” on it.  Malcolm was still a bit young for most of the games, so his efforts to score a ball in the bull’s eye of skeeball or hit more than three critters in whack-a-mole fell mostly flat. Alas, he only earned 78 tickets, good for two small lollipops and a crappy plastic microphone.  (The deluxe microphone with High School Musical painted on it went for 3500 tickets.)

Not counting the large mechanized rat singing cheery songs to the 300 kids in the undersized main room, the truly frightening thing about the experience was the wild look in the eyes of the kids running around while playing the games.  Now, I have never actually seen the look of desperation in a crack fiend’s eyes as they scrounge around the gutter for enough change to get their next nickel bag, but I am pretty sure it is the same look that an eight year old has while running around attempting to acquire enough tickets for a cheap plastic snake.  Each kid ran around with long strands of tickets under their arms, and if you got in their way, they would take you out.  If you stayed at a game too long, they would take your legs out from under you.  I told one kid that it was Malcolm’s turn to play one of the games and when he turned and scowled at me, I saw the face of pure evil.  He actually hissed at me, then slowly turned and put another coin in the game while Malkie and I backed slowly away.

The slogan for Chuck E. Cheese is “Where a kid can be a kid.”  I am not sure that this accurately depicts what is going on.  I would say something like “Chuck E. Cheese: Where Your Kids Can Run Around Like Sociopaths” is more like it.  “Now With Larger, Creepier Singing Rats!”  Then again, I am not much of marketing guy.