dailydiatribes

The second Circle of Hell is Chuck E. Cheese or any place where large numbers of small children congregate to scream their lungs out and demand more tokens.

The wonderful thing about having six years between your children is that you never get away from the aforementioned places.  Just as you are taking a deep breath and start enjoying restaurants where your food doesn't come in a box, you have to start all over again with the next child.  So it is with Anna the demon goddess.  She feels right at home in Chuck E. Cheese.

There is no denying that Chuck E. Cheese was invented by the devil.  It's amazing how brightly the sun shines outside of the building.  But as the doors slowly swing shut behind you, the atmosphere becomes dark and murky, almost sinister in nature.  You are forced to go through a turnstile, where a helper demon stamps your hand with the number 666 so your child cannot leave with the wrong person.  Like anyone would want to take her!

The farther in you go, the darker it gets.  Many helper demons throng about it orange polyester uniforms, emblazoned with the image of the demon god Chuck E. Cheese.  If you have the misfortune to be there for a birthday party, you will be stuck all the way in the back of the building, where it is darkest.  A life size Chuck E. Cheese robot dude holds court in one corner, enticing the youngsters over to him so he can suck their souls out, replacing their sweet innocence with a demonic force which urges them to ask Mommy for another twenty dollars for tokens.

Many strange games abound, most of them evil by their very nature.  For example, one game exists whereby you use a large mallet to pound small rodents back into their holes.  An appallingly violent game designed to desensitize young children to the effects of violence.  James Dobson has done a whole series on this topic on Focus on the Family.  Another game would have you hurl wooden balls up a ramp and into circles of various sizes.  No one ever hits the 10,000 point circle, but I am sure if they did, Lucifer himself would materialize and spirit that lucky individual straight down to Hell.  It's a direct portal, everyone knows this.

Each demonic game spits out tickets, two to three at a time.  If you manage to collect several hundred tickets, your child might be lucky enough to redeem them for a small prize.  It costs several thousand dollars to earn a prize that costs the Chuck E. Cheese people $.03 to buy.  But there is something special about a pencil from Chuck E.  Does anyone remember the old Fox tv show "Friday the 13th" about the antiques store with the cursed relics?  I am thinking along similar lines for the prizes Chuck E. hands out to the little tykes!

Aside:  I vacuumed up a monkey's paw last week.  I forgot to tell you all this.  Sammy the dog ate a Barbie monkey (from the Barbie petting zoo) and all that was left was its little paw.  I called Kathleen immediately, because only she would truly grasp the literary significance of such an event.  Is it any wonder Gina had to perform the gray hairyectomy on the vacuum cleaner the very next week?????  Ok, that only popped into my head because of cursed relics; sorry about that!!

Ok, back to my story.  There is no bright side to the Chuck E. Cheese Emporium of Exotic Games and Big Fuzzy Rodents.  It's loud and there are ten million children running around in a building with a max occupancy of 197.  They frequently bump into you, and if your child puts her tokens down, they are gone before you can say "jack sprat" because some other little heathen has scooped them up, in order to EARN MORE TICKETS!!!! 

There is a series of tunnels overhead, but no child ever enters the tunnels.  The children are too busy spending Daddy's paycheck smacking rodents on the head, or hurling balls.  There are rides too.  Each ride costs a token and it lifts your child up for about 1/10 of a second and then the ride is over.  Obviously, it takes at least ten tokens before any level of satisfaction is achieved.

The entire time we were there, a man went around with a wrench, fixing the various games.  He flitted from game to game, like a little bee gathering lubricating oil from various nuts and bolts.  Or maybe he was reapplying the curses on the various games to ensure no child can win more than two tickets, thereby upping the number of tickets it takes to buy the plastic doohickey prize. 

I actually equate a trip to Chuck E. Cheese to feeding Rocky the Bearded Dragon a mealworm.  These two events are equally repulsive to me, yet they are things I would do only for my children.  Which goes to prove I will go to Hell and Back for my children!!