I've returned to Chuck E. Cheese after a 22 year absence. 22 years...the first 5 or so consisting of my sister and I BEGGING to be taken there but Daddy said the pizza was gross and called it Yuckie Cheese. As if it was EVER about the pizza. So I went back with a friend and her two year old. It was a Friday night and I had worked almost 55 hours that week. All I wanted was to sit and eat and decompress and let them go play. The place is insane, it was packed to the gills of poorly dressed adults and kids with runny noses and glazed eyes. I refuse to believe the place doesn't get lawsuits as frequently as the Archdiocese of Portland.
Big kids were literally walking on smaller kids, kicking them off of gyrating helicopters and stealing their turns on video games. I saw a grown woman sucking her thumb. Sucking her thumb. I saw a woman sobbing in joy at the sight of her suprise birthday cake for her suprise 24th birthday party...at Chuck E. Cheese! My friends would be toast if they did that to me.
But the most disturbing...of the many many disturbing things I witnessed that night...was the man with a gun. He was a tall slender man with his wife, a small group, and his two children, a blond boy of about 7 and a little girl who couldn't be more than 2 or three. He was wearing cowboy boots, tight black jeans, a white turtleneck, and a leather vest that was a size or two too small, and a gun in a holster on his hip. A GUN in a holster on his hip. There was no uniform, no badge, no indication that he should be carrying such a thing. We noticed it when he was tossing his little girl into the air. I just have one question. Who the fuck let this man into Chuck E. Cheese with a gun! How is that allowed?
Granted, you get a stamp on your hand to prove you had a kid with you so you can't leave without a kid (though you could probably just go shopping for one with the most pleasant personality and saunter on out the door with them 'cause, hey, you have a stamp and so do they! They must belong to you! There are a few rules posted about where you can and cannot wear shoes, how many refills you can get of pop, but nothing about bringing weapons into a children's playplace.
So after a 22 year absence, I returned to the place of childhood mystery. The mythical land filled with fun and adventure of epic porportions. The place where the childlike empress sits in the Ivory Tower and beats gophers over the head with a mallot. It's hard to admit it when your parents are right. What the hell is Chuck, anyway? A rat?
