Everyone’s a Winner

Something strange happened yesterday. I took the boys to Chuck E. Cheese’s after school. That’s not the strange part, although anyone who knows me well will be like, Whaa? You took your kids where? For, like, why now?

Here’s the strange part. No matter how well the boys played a game, how many points they scored, or how lucky they were, every machine in the joint doled out four tickets. Four tickets no matter what. Four tickets per customer. Four tickets per token. Four tickets even if they hit the flipping jackpot.

That’s messed up.

What if a ball landed in the Power Shot?

Four effing tickets. Fours as far as the eye could see.

What if the Skee Ball World Champion played next to a five-year-old kid picking his nose and tossing half of the balls in the wrong direction? They’d both get four tickets.

What happens when a kid goes into the ticket blaster at a birthday party? I don’t even want to know!

And when your kid finally runs out of tokens after two exhausting hours and realizes he only has 64 tickets to show for it and can only “afford” a sticker and a plastic spider ring at the prize counter? Dude, that is not okay.

There were signs everywhere that said “Everyone’s a Winner.” Don’t get me started about everything that’s wrong with Florida, but at least you get what you earn at Chuck E. Cheese’s in the Sunshine State (or at least at the Pembroke Pines location). Yesterday was our first and last time at Chuck E. Cheese’s in the Garden State (what’s up, New Jersey?), because even though it was clean and quiet, the four ticket fraud is ree-diculous.

In related news, I’m Mom of the Year because I did, in fact, take my kids to Chuck E. Cheese’s after school for no good reason. Also, they never want to go back again, so I guess, in this case, everyone is a winner.