21st Century Man on…Chuck E. Cheese

Travel is an important aspect of any well-rounded life experience. One of the key benefits of travel is the discovery that most of the earth sort of sucks. There are whole countries in this world that just completely blow. Even big ones. And even within otherwise worthwhile places there are sections that are dirty, ugly, nasty, dangerous and generally unpleasant. Nonetheless, even the suckiest places tend to have some redeeming value. Beirut, Lebanon, for example, is certainly no picnic, but you can still find some killer falafel there. Compton, California is one of the last places you’d ever want to raise kids, and yet some of the world’s finest rap music comes from there.

On the other hand, nothing good ever comes from the single worst place in the world–Chuck E. Cheese restaurant. If you’ve ever traveled to this establishment, you know it sets the gold standard for unmitigated awfulness. In fact, though the nighttime temperature on, say, Neptune, can reach -218 degrees Centigrade and the oxygen content in its atmosphere is non-existent, Chuck E. Cheese here on earth may actually be the absolute worst travel destination in the entire universe.

Let’s take a closer look at what makes that place so singularly horrendous:

The Kids
The ‘kids’ you see at a Chuck E. Cheese comprise a species of small creatures that resemble human children. They are, in fact, very similar until you look closely enough to notice the subtle biological differences. For example, a human child who wishes to get from here to there will characteristically seek out a suitable direction of travel with its eyes. Once it locks on, the immature Homo sapiens will proceed in that direction, accelerating to a species-appropriate speed and making adjustments along the way based on obstacles, terrain and other stimuli. By contrast, ‘kids’ at Chuck E. Cheese have exactly two speeds: stop and extremely fast. They lack the ability to evaluate their current surroundings and do not utilize their eyes for any sort of target sighting process before exploding into motion. As a consequence, you should expect your child to suffer at least one head-butting injury per visit as a result of some ‘kid’ randomly bursting into a sprint perpendicular to the most appropriate direction of travel. You may, in fact, get run into several times on a given visit, but the only way a Chuck E. Cheese ‘kid’ will run straight into you is when it’s looking backwards over a shoulder, so you must remain vigilant at all times.

The Adults
One reason we say ‘kids,’ of course, is because these little humanoids have no discernable parents. Yes, there are adults in the establishment, but none of them have any observable interest in chaperoning any particular ‘child.’ Some of the adults feed tokens to the youngsters, but there is never any exchange of pleasantries or parental advice/discipline. You can politely ask one “hi, excuse me, but um…that child over there who looks just like you, except with a bloody muzzle from biting all the other kids, um……does he belong to you?” and you’ll be lucky to elicit anything more than a glassy stare. Clearly, the adults you see there are not parents. They’re just people who came to feed the animals at the brat farm.

The Employees
The employees are the polar opposite of the ‘kids.’ They look like the kids, but they’ve had all the life sucked out of them. This is, of course, perfectly understandable. Homo sapiens kids go to Chuck E. Cheese, enjoy a 2-3 hour sugar boner and then leave. For months at a time. The employees, on the other hand, have to mop up some random kid’s puke hour after hour, day after day, and then return the next day to do it all again. If this was your lot in life, you would a.) quit immediately, b.) develop a Quaalude habit, or c.) plug your brain into the great Chuck E. Cheese factory farm and let them harvest your extra energy in exchange for a few extra bucks a month. From your brain to their toppings.

The Food
A wise man, I think it might have been Confucius, once said that pizza is like sex. When it’s good, it’s great, and when it’s bad, it’s still pretty good. Obviously, they didn’t have Chuck E. Cheese in Confucius’ time. If they had, he would have discovered that having absolutely no incentive to make your pizza palatable will eventually lead you to cut every possible corner in the pursuit of profit. You will spread a thin layer of a ketchup-like substance over a circular piece of corrugated cardboard salvaged from the next door grocery store’s recycling bin. You’ll cover this concoction with a thin layer of rat’s milk cheese, chunks of pepperoni-shaped road kill and a ground mixture of oregano, salt and compounds harvested from the employees known colloquially as “herbs and spices.” You’ll serve this mess to the hyperactive, indiscriminate six year old ‘kids’ who make up your target demographic and future workforce, and then you’ll convince the adults that twenty free tokens are adequate compensation for having to eat this frankenmonstrosity.

The Games
With all its bright colors and flashing lights and whatnot, Chuck E. Cheese looks like a pretty fun place. Through careful image manipulation, Chuck can convince even the bright kids that he’s all about having big fun, in the same way that a skilled realtor can make a burned down crack house look charming and quaint in the online listing. It’s only when you look a little closer that you realize all the games were purchased in 1994. In fact, no piece of equipment has undergone any perceptible service or maintenance in this century. The ride that was broken when you tried it back in 2000 is still broken now, and there is still no sign on it to prevent patrons from wasting more tokens. (Try telling one of the zomployees that a game ate your token. Go ahead. I’ll wait here.)

The skee ball machine that only had four balls in it the last time you were there is now down to two balls, so you’d better be good at aiming for the center chute if you have any hope of converting your expensive tokens into worthless prize tickets.

(Fucking prize tickets. Throughout most of the 20th century, the arcade was a place to exchange small amounts of change for several minutes of entertainment, depending on your skill level. In most post-modern arcades, this concept is obsolete. Nowadays you exchange fairly significant sums of money for prize tickets that have no cash value. The fun and skill have been carefully extracted from the equation. Sure, skee ball has always spit out prize tickets, but these are an actual bonus, since you would’ve maybe played skee ball anyway. By contract, ‘playing’ a typical ‘game’ at a typical Chuck E. Cheese nowadays involves dropping in a dollar token, squeezing a handle or twisting a knob, and then watching the resulting random series of flashing lights slow down and stop on a particular denomination. 5 tickets. 10 tickets. 50 tickets! OMG YOU FUCKING WON A MILLION FUCKING TICKETS! WOOHOO!!! That’s almost enough tickets for the fucking hula hoop!)

How to Avoid Chuck E. Cheese
Obviously, I’m not telling you anything you didn’t already know. You’ve been to Chuck E. Cheese, after all, so you’ve seen all these things for yourself. Regrettably, I lack the power to fix Chuck E. Cheese itself, but perhaps I can help you avoid that particular hell.

Preferred Course of Evasive Action
The key to avoiding the evil mouse’s lair is befriending your kids’ friends’ parents. Don’t think of this as a chore. Most of these people are actually quite nice. They’re probably as good as, if not better than, your current friends. Be cordial to them at all the birthday parties. Invite their kids over to your house for play dates once in a while. And then, the moment some negligent parent announces a party a Chuck E. Cheese, you dump and dump hard. Dump first and ask questions later. In fact, you’d better be prepared to dump fast and hard or you might end up the dumpee.

If you manage to dump successfully, consider dropping your child off with a helmet. At the very least, be sure to communicate your child’s blood type in case his or her head injuries require stitches and a blood transfusion.

Emergency Course of Evasive Action
If you get out-dumped and end up with all the kids, you may need to consider drastic measures. In some cases, your own trip to the emergency room may be preferable to an evening in the company of that fucking mouse. Take up skateboarding immediately. Or stair diving. Lay your leg across two boards and snap it with a mallet if need be. Hopefully, it won’t come to this, but if you don’t prepare yourself for certain probabilities now, you’re likely to make a rash decision when you eventually end up with a sledgehammer in hand.

Good luck out there. It’s…………hell.