Saturday, February 16, 2008

When I die, I know what hell will look like.....

One of the things we humans all have in common is the thoughts we have put into wondering what happens to us when we die. Maybe we spent nights as a child praying for forgiveness so we wouldn't wind up with that awful devil that parents and preachers spent so much time getting us to fear. It is one thing that no one can answer and we are all left to imagine where we will end up once our time on this earth is done. While not absolutely 100% certain, I am pretty sure after today I know what hell looks like. A knock-off Chuck E. Cheese.

Our daughter was invited there for a birthday party for the next door neighbor's daughter. It is a pretty cool place for a local joint considering we are in a small town. During the summertime they have go-carts, bumper boats, paintball, putt putt golf and a small roller coaster. Best part is it is 5 minutes from our house. During the summertime you never really venture inside except to get drinks, pretzels and load back up your card with credits. Wintertime? The outdoor stuff is closed down and you are forced inside into the Chuck E. Cheese style gallery with the noisy games, rockwall and laser tag.

Let me tell you, it is the bowels of hell. The noise alone makes you want to pull your own eyelashes out for a distraction. The obnoxious offspring of completely idiotic parents make you wish they served booze. Your own obnoxious offspring running from game to game shoving tickets at you to hold and whining when the tokens/credits run out? Enough to make you wish you could still take kids to the bathroom for a good old butt kicking without fear of the cops hauling you out of there in handcuffs. Then you get to feed the machine that counts all of their tickets up and it is guaranteed that at least half of the machines will be broken so you have to wait behind that one kid who feeds the machine one. ticket. at. a. time. UGH!!! Of course then you get to follow that same kid to the counter where he/she spends an incredibly ridiculous amount of time selecting his prizes. But then it gets SO much better. Now you get to explain to your own child how many points they have and what they can get for that amount. Then they select something that they don't have enough tickets for and you explain this in a sweet voice and ask if could they please move down to the side where the lower-priced prizes are easier to see?

After they go through 50 different scenarios and still haven't picked anything, you find yourself walking away from the counter while they demand to know why they didn't get to pick anything. With gritted teeth you snap that it is because they couldn't decide from anything they could actually get and that if it is that hard they should hold onto them and wait until next time when they can get something they really want. Their little eyes beg and implore you to go back so you turn around to get back on line. Only to find that same kid from the ticket-counting machine again who is picking 5-ticket prizes with like 500 total tickets.

Yes, when I die I am going to hell and THIS will be where I will have to spend it.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I totally agree.....

I used to think Hell was Dave and Busters with all the drunk adults standing at the ticket counter trying to decide if they wanted the $3.00 slinky or the $4.00 slinky... the difference of 5 gazillion tickets.

Your Hell is much better than mine... :>)

Reticent Writer said...

Ha ha. Yeah that would be worse. I have only been to Dave and Buster's once and it was for a work function so I didn't get to see the worst of that experience ; )

Thanks for reading and commenting!! I had to get that experience off my chest, LOL!

Anonymous said...

hahah that's so funny you bring that up because I asked my roommate what she wanted to do for her birthday and she said she wanted to go to Chuck E Cheese.

yessssssssss

Reticent Writer said...

Oh NO!! I would have to put my giant foot down (sorry couldn't resist that one, LOL!) and say I can't do it. Say you see enough rats in NYC and don't need to do it for fun. The best CEC around is in the town where I work cause they serve beer!! Yippee. I can actually deal with those visits ; )