Tickets

 

So I took the boys to Main Event today with a friend of theirs. It's sort of a large arcade, but with bowling, pool and laser tag along with video games. It's one of those places where you accumulate tickets that you can cash in for "valuable prizes." A stick of gum might cost 100 tickets, a plastic comb 500, a set of Beats headphones 50,000. That sort of thing. Tickets are electronic now and added to the card that you had to swipe to play the game.

I used to take Adri to similar places such as Chuck E. Cheese, Showbiz Pizza, and Nickelmania when she was a little girl, and she'd amass the then paper tickets in long ribbons and at the end of the day she'd get a tube of lip gloss or a plastic Oreo cookie keychain for her 3000 tickets. I always tried to get her to save them and get something she'd really like, but impulse control being what it is with kids of that age I was usually not successful. That 10,000 ticket Simba stuffed animal was always just out of reach.

The one "game" that Adri was always really good at consisted of a round table with a glass dome. The circumference of the circle had light bulbs that would light in succession really fast, and your job was to mash down on a button to stop the light at which point you'd receive the number of tickets associated with that illuminated light. Ticket values were in the range of 2, or 4, or 8... but there was always one "jackpot" light that was 500 tickets. For some reason, Adri was really successful stopping the spinning circle of light on this jackpot and won the max more than once.

When I was walking with the boys at Main Event scoping out all the games, I saw the exact same table and told the boys about their mama and how good she was at it. They showed a bit of interest but then ran over to a racing game and I was left to tamp down the melancholy that was welling up inside of me.

Right before we left, however, Wesley wanted to try a similar game. It, too, was a large circle with lights along the perimeter, but this time on a wall, like a giant lighted prize wheel. You pulled a lever to start the lights and mashed down on a button to stop as before. I reminded him that his mama loved this and won often so he wanted to try.

And he did it. He stopped on the jackpot and won the 500 ticket jackpot, and I have a photo to prove it.

A lesser man, one who gave into unseen powers and hopes of having your loved ones looking over you from somewhere else, would have seen this as a sign that Adri was there, showing herself. I wish I was a lesser man sometimes, and for a small moment I let myself enjoy that idea. The boy, after all, was so excited.

And at the end of the day, I convinced them to save their 1300 tickets if they really wanted those Beats headphones, just as I eventually was able to convince Adrianna to do the same.

Of course, as what usually happens, when they're old enough to want to save for something more than a Pixie Stick they're too old to go back later, and that is why I came across a large bag of Chuck E. Cheese tickets in Adri's old room a couple of days ago.

She never did get that Simba stuffed animal, but (maybe?) she helped Wesley towards a set of Beats?