So now that I've babbled away about starting a blog.. WHAT do I WRITE about?! Hello instant writer's block! Then today, along came my muse.. Chuck E. Cheese. (Well THERE'S a sentence I never thought I'd type.)
I should mention that after surviving a trip there a couple months ago, Tim and I signed a contract in blood immediately upon exiting that we would never, ever return. Like even if the tri-state area was being bombed and poisonous gases were dumping down from the skies, it was an Apocalyptic-like situation and Chuck E. Cheese was the ONLY place we could go to survive-- we would take our chances with the bombs and poison.
Funny how you can forget just how painful an event was after such a short time. I hate comparing Chuck E. Cheese to childbirth but.. yeeeeeeah.
Who in their right mind would return to such an anxiety-inducing pit of doom?! Tim and I wondered this aloud after stumbling out of the doors and reaching freedom and air that is clean and not filled with the shrieking of disgruntled and/or over-stimulated little people. We had SURVIVED and would never go back.
A few nights ago while we were clearing dinner from the table I mentioned to Tim the plans I'd made for this afternoon. Before I could even get the "Cheese" part of "Chuck E. Cheese" out of my mouth, the plate in Tim's hand hit the floor. Mind you, our last encounter with the giant mouse had resulted in Tim totally ditching me with Patrick and Anna in the midst of a riot of adrenaline-and-sugar charged gang of kidlets, only to find him whimpering and curled up in a fetal position on the OPPOSITE SIDE of the building. He will endure pretty much anything and everything if the kids are having a good time but that kind of atmosphere traumatizes him. To this day he claims when I found him hunkered down in the corner he didn't even know where he was. (Timmo, if you're reading this, I'm sorry, but you know you can't deny it.) Hey, I give him props for even staying in the building.
So.. in we go to be branded with a stamp that shows up under a black light and links us to our kids. How bad can this be anyway? Surely my traumatic memories of this place were exaggerated.. right?
WRONG. SO WRONG.
In a word: NIGHTMARE. They need to hand out free passes to the nearest mental institution along with admission.
So let's recap, shall we?
One child vomiting in the corner (thankfully NOT mine)-- CHECK!
One set of parents in a knock-down, drag-out brawl over whose turn it is to fish their kid out of the tunnel of death-- CHECK!
Nine thousand different games making seizure-inducing noises-- CHECK!
One oversized, seemingly angry mouse chasing us around-- CHECK!
Approximately 67,849 tokens in one pocket and twice as many tickets in the other-- CHECK & CHECK!
I counted not one, not two but SEVEN children CRYING.. so my question is, if even the kids are sobbing, who IS having a good time in this equation? Surely not the little man stuffed into a mouse suit that's forced to trot around in a climate that is practically tropical from mass amounts of humans and sweat and excessive amounts of breathing due to SCREAMING and RUNNING and MADNESS.
So we go up to cash in our multitude of tickets that the kids have jammed into every single pocket of my jeans (darn you, Chuck E.. can't you give them little bags to stuff them in or something?!). I mean the whole point of this ordeal is to drag home these fabulous "prizes" Mr. Cheese has laid out before these wide-eyed children of mine, right? I'm flaring my nostrils and biting my lip the entire time we stand in the line that's seventeen people deep as I come to grips with the fact we could've bought like a week's worth of groceries with the money that will be earning us plastic spider rings and bouncy balls.
A year and a half later, we reach the front of the line. It is completely inevitable that while my darling two year old is mulling over the seemingly-impossible choice of whether she would like a blue or purple sucker, the kid behind us comes up and starts pounding his angry little three-year old fists on the glass case holding all this crap.. uh, I mean TOTALLY AWESOME TOYS. Clearly he has snapped and frankly, I can't blame him. It's taking all my adult cells not to join him in a mob-mentality kind of mutiny that results in jumping up and down, foaming at the mouth and ripping my hair out.
In the end, the kids walk away with good memories and their little hands are stuffed with candy and plastic mouse keychains (that break before we get out of the parking lot, of course).
Will we go back? Well of COURSE we will. Why? Because THAT is how much we love our kids!
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