A Close Call At Chuck E. Cheese

Rachel and I were at Chuck E. Cheese again today—which is further evidence I am being punished for something I’ve done. I’m not sure what it is but when I find out, I will be sure to post my discovery here as a public service and cautionary reminder to others.

I heard Rachel calling my name and she was walking away from the game she was playing proudly holding up a string of tickets she had won.

While Rachel was walking away from the game, however, a very young little girl stepped up to the game and grabbed Rachel’s cup of game tokens. Rachel turned around, saw the little girl taking her cup of tokens and she moved extremely quickly to take the cup of tokens away from the little girl. I think, perhaps, the little girl did not realize that at Chuck E. Cheese a person’s cup of tokens is a sacred treasure which is never to be touched by a third party and—for sure—it is never to be swiped. This would be like stealing someone’s horse in the old West.

This interaction was sort of interesting to watch because Rachel is not very quick and she does not have a high level of physical coordination. But when she needed to get her cup of tokens back she moved with the speed and agility of Batman.

It probably will not surprise you to read that the little girl screamed her disapproval when Rachel snatched the cup of tokens from her hand. At this precise moment the little girl’s father came around one of the large video game consoles and into view.

He was a big guy. And, for the record, he appeared to be very strong.

He looked at the two girls—his daughter and my daughter—then he looked at me. I smiled and shrugged my shoulders attempting to communicate, in a friendly way, this thought, “This is what happens, sometimes, with kids, right?”

It seemed like it took a full minute for him to respond. Actually, it was probably less than a second. But as Tom Petty says, “The waiting is the hardest part.”

The large dad smiled at me and nodded.

I thought, “Whew!”

(By the way, it’s not very often that you encounter a Tom Petty reference in a Chuck E. Cheese story, these days.)

He told his daughter, “No, that cup belongs to this girl.” nodding toward Rachel.

His daughter was not happy with this outcome but she immediately took off in another direction, her curiosity piqued by something else in the shiny, bright, flashy environment that is Chuck E. Cheese.

I sat back in our booth, looked at our tray of Chuck E. hot wings and thought: Who knew that being a dad at Chuck E. Cheese would involve potential grappling, fisticuffs and ninja maneuvers? Then I took another sip of Diet Mountain Dew.