guess who is a proud sponsor of PBS?… you guessed it. clever marketing, Chuck.
we all know that I use PBS to babysit my kids every now and again when I need to wash my dreadlocks hair or I don’t know… type this stuff out.
every day (usually at least 10 times), j asks “can we go to Chuck E Cheese where a kid can be a kid?” and every day I say “not today” well, that is until today.
this morning I realized we would be out of town and halfway to the nearest C.E.C at lunchtime. I told j that today was his lucky day and that we could go but he had to be sooooo good at the appointment I was headed to. bribery at it’s finest. go ahead and judge me.
j was good. c wasn’t. surprise? no. we went anyway. when daddy j gets home it’ll be much easier to not take the offender. your days of piggy-back funning are numbered, c. better get yo’ mind right guuuurrrrrlll.
we arrived at C.E.C. and after we waited for an an indeterminate amount of time (felt like an hour, was probably 5 minutes) we all got matching invisible number stamps on our arms to protect the kids from this sort of toddler disappearing act. and we got to place our food order. we got 1 medium pizza, 4 drinks, 2 salad bars, and 20 tokens. i was holding $40.00 of cash money and when the ex-meth head told me my total. not only did i put the 2 jackson twins back in my wallet and grab my debit card, but i was ashamed of how foolish i’d been to think $40 would cover that. mom shaming… is that a website yet?
once we had secured our TSA-approved plastic cutlery we headed off to the room where those creepy animals put on an automated show every 10 minutes. ma’am went and got drinks while i stayed with the party people. and sometime while we were waiting for the food to get there, c picked up 2 tokens and put them in her mouth like a little germy appetizer. i am pretty sure i’d have rather her licked the bathroom floor because i bet they at least wash that once a week.
once the food arrived, i will say that i was pleasantly surprised how good it was. i am not a pepsi person and that was all that they had, but i accepted it and moved on. the pizza was thin crust and banging- the kids thought so too. the entire medium pizza was consumed by the 4 of us. and my kids were responsible for 6 of those pieces. guess who is going shopping for 5T and 3T kids’ clothes soon?
after food it was off to play.
c was mostly more interested in running around and screaming than actually playing, but that was to be expected. j played a few games and we kicked a little pancakes (re: butt) at skeeball before we had almost run out of tokens.
the kids had 2 tokens left a little boy ran up to the machine next to me, looked up with big puppy dog eyes and said “where’d all my tokens go!?!” and so i went to hand him 1 of my kids’ last 2. he tried to pry the other one out of my ninja grip. what a little jerk.
when the kids got done playing nature called and i left ma’am and the cuties on the indoor playground equipment while i went to take care of my business. on the walk back to the potty, i noticed that they had the emergency door by the bathrooms WIDE open. so much for the invisible number stamps… because child molesters and kidnappers would NEVER use the back door. stooopid.
in the 3 minutes i was in the bathroom some ish went down. i got the story second hand from my mom later, but the high points involved my son getting double foot kicked by some teenage spring break jerkface and my mom yelling shrieking “OH HELLLLLLL NOOOOO!” so loudly that literally every parent or guardian in the building came over to the playground to see what was about to go down.
fight! fight! fight! fight! retired school teacher vs. prick kid on WWF channel at noon. call your local cable provider for details.
the kid stayed up in the playground where he was safe from bodily harm and got a little lesson on William Congreve grandma style because afterall, Hell hath no fury like a [ma’am] scorned. When she saw me come around the corner she shrieked again “MEAGAN! MEAGAN! MEAGAN! I CAN’T GET HER OUT OF THERE!!!!!!” which totally didn’t give me a heart attack at all. i came a running in my flip flop espadrilles- that was a sight. when i finally make it over to the equipment to see:
i know you won’t believe this, but i am sure we will go back to C.E.C. soon. the fact of the matter is, the kids had fun and that’s all that matters. the only difference is next time we will bring daddy j since ma’am has sworn C.E.C. as her enemy for life.
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