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.
Many years ago I read about Elvis' practice of paying to
have a whole movie theater or a whole roller skating rink to himself and his
posse.
