{"id":146,"date":"2009-08-24T21:05:22","date_gmt":"2009-08-25T02:05:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.annakatedonovan.com\/?p=146"},"modified":"2009-08-24T21:06:25","modified_gmt":"2009-08-25T02:06:25","slug":"me-vs-the-arcade","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/annakatedonovan.com\/?p=146","title":{"rendered":"me vs. the arcade"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you read my earlier post “What was I thinking<\/a>?” you know that I do not like arcades.\u00a0 They are loud, chaotic and stressful for me.\u00a0 I don’t have an explanation why it stresses me out, it just does.\u00a0 I don’t like letting my kids run around like wild animals in public either so that makes it worse.\u00a0 Plus, my two children under age 6 need to be accompanied so I have no choice but to enter the den of chaos.<\/p>\n

I know the reason for putting an arcade in a family restaurant.\u00a0 The kids pump quarters in the machines ad nauseum while the parents eat their dinner.\u00a0 It is a stellar idea.<\/p>\n

SO, one time when Robert was out of town (of course he was – these things only happen when he is out of town), Hattie was invited to a birthday party at the big pizza place in town.\u00a0 The arcade at this particular pizza place doubles as the party room.\u00a0 Yippee!\u00a0 With Robert gone, I attended the party with all three girls in tow.\u00a0 We got there and greeted the birthday boy and were immediately seated for our pizza dinner.<\/p>\n

I have never seen children gobble down pepperoni so fast.\u00a0 Even Hattie, who takes a half hour to eat a spoonful of rice one grain at a time, finished her pizza at a Guinness record pace.\u00a0 Within minutes, all of the children have choked down their dinner and are chomping at the bit to get their tokens and hit the slots.\u00a0 Abigail is old enough to be on her own so I gave her some tokens and she headed off.\u00a0 Hattie is still a little uncoordinated and can’t read yet so she needs my help.\u00a0 Laura just wants to run from game to game and screech.\u00a0 Yea!<\/p>\n

Hattie made her first game choice and was able to manage it with minimal instruction.\u00a0 I set off to pull Laura away from dominating the driving game and I hear Hattie yell “Mom, I WON!”\u00a0 Laura and I go dashing over to Hattie and sure enough, she has hit the jackpot.\u00a0 I am watching the game tally the score when I realize that Hattie is already on to game #2.\u00a0 The first game starts spitting out tickets and I hear “Mom, I WON AGAIN!”\u00a0 I turn to see that game start churning out tickets and Hattie is running to the 3rd game.\u00a0 But the 1st game is still barfing out tickets in a pile at my feet!\u00a0 And, oh no, WHERE IS LAURA???<\/p>\n

Luckily, this arcade is designed so that the door back into the restaurant is not easily noticed by toddlers so Laura was not far.\u00a0 Also, lucky for me, this was a birthday party with lots of moms.\u00a0 It only took one look at my harried face for other moms at the party to come to my rescue.<\/p>\n

In the end, Abigail won 48 tickets.\u00a0 With those she “bought” 3 pieces of gum and a neon eraser.\u00a0 Hattie, the uncoordinated child, won 576 tickets in less than 30 minutes.\u00a0 She bought 5 pieces of candy and a parachuting Dora that promptly broke in the car on the way home.\u00a0 Gotta love it….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you read my earlier post “What was I thinking?” you know that I do not like arcades.\u00a0 They are…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,9],"tags":[68],"class_list":["post-146","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-children","category-random-thoughts","tag-arcade"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/annakatedonovan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/annakatedonovan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/annakatedonovan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/annakatedonovan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/annakatedonovan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=146"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/annakatedonovan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":150,"href":"https:\/\/annakatedonovan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146\/revisions\/150"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/annakatedonovan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=146"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/annakatedonovan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=146"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/annakatedonovan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=146"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}