The Kiddie Casino

I wanted to title this post "Satan's Playground" but the hubby, being as smart as he is, inspired me to change my mind to something much more appropriate!

You see, we spent a little over an hour in the one place that brings chills up every parent's spine when mentioned. Yes, you guessed it, Satan's Pizza Palace......



As I mentioned in another post, it's Spring Break here in God's Country, Alabama. Because we are working this year, the hubby and I have tried to incorporate a few fun things for the kids on their week off. And for some crazy reason, I volunteered to take the kiddies and a friend to the Prince of Darkness' Palace! We knew the kids would be more than thrilled so we sucked it up and "took one for the team". We had a plan: supper at tolerable restaurant followed by a trip to the Antichrist's Arcade. Our plans came to a screeching halt when the kids informed us they were not hungry and wanted to go directly to Beelzebub's Burrow.

The nausea and head spinning began about, oh, let me see, 30 seconds after we got our arms stamped with the number 666 in invisible ink by a 16 year old. The mayhem then ensued. We were greeted by the OUT OF ORDER sign on the token machine, which also instructed us to return to the one open cash register for our golden tokens! I felt like a drug addict waiting in line for a crack rock, or a zoo animal waiting to be fed. FINALLY, 10 minutes later we got what we came for, Lucifer's Loot!

The hubby picked out the best booth in the house with a perfect view of his cell phone's screen, no seriously, he was watching the kid's drinks. The princess played her usual softball style skeeball-- you've all seen it, you know exactly what I am talking about. The boys settled in on a game that involves dropping a ball on a rotating platform with numbered holes. Tickets spit out based on which hole the ball lands in. It was mesmerizing to watch the tokens go in and the tickets fly out! At one point, a little girl with a cup full of tokens stood at the spinning machine and put in coin after coin. My little princess waited patiently for about 2 minutes and then she got face to face with the ponytail girl. She spoke no words, but clearly gave this girl the "listen sister, I'm gonna give you 2 more minutes then I'm moving you outta' the way" look. Message not received, I moved the princess on to spend her last few coins. We cashed out our chips, I mean tickets, and all three decided to save their tickets until another day. A trip to the ticket counter runs a close second to the trip to Devil's Dungeon.

In retrospect the ponytail girl really made something very clear to me. The path to Gambler's Anonymous begins early. It's not some crazy mutated part of the human genome, it all begins with a trip to Chuck E. Cheese's!