COLUMN: Cheesy enough to scare a grown man
It’s embarrassing to admit this, but I am terrified of a large mouse.
No, it’s not Mickey Mouse, Remy or Jerry, it’s worse: Chuck E. Cheese.
Of the great mice of legend, El Chucko is the forgotten one and for good reason, too. He’s the stuff of nightmares.
It’s hard to imagine Mickey as a terrifying creature, but Chuck E. Cheese could be the villain in the next Stephen King novel.
I didn’t want to write about Chuck E. Cheese, but after the events of this weekend, I feel compelled to.
I was planning on writing this column with the theme of “How to …” I had all sorts of great ideas like “How to make a baby: Myth style,” “How to make a tank out of your wife’s 7 billion bobby pins on the floor,” or “How to put on panties, featuring Britney Spears,” but things all changed Friday night. I found a new how to: How to scare a grown man.
You see, my wife received a phone call from her mother letting us know her six-year-old sister would be having a family birthday party that night at Chuck E. Cheese’s, and we were invited to come. After some begging and pleading and a few tears from my wife, I agreed to go. After all, it’s not like it was the circus and I wouldn’t have to face my irrational fear of clowns.
As we pulled into the parking lot, I was amazed at how small the building was. I hadn’t been to a Chuck E. Cheese since I was a kid, and the place seemed a whole lot bigger then.
When we stepped inside, I had a flashback to that scene from “Toy Story,” when Woody first sees Pizza Planet and is blown away by all the flashing lights. I stood dumbfounded for a moment until a kid blasted by me, nearly knocking me on my butt. Stupid kid. What business did he have here?
Suddenly I realized I had no business there. This is the kid mecca, the ultimate hangout “where a kid can be a kid,” the place where I would likely die as kids ganged up on me in a “Lord of the Flies” way for getting in the way of Whack-A-Mole.
After wading through hordes of running children with tickets and tokens, I found my in-laws sitting at a table full of half-eaten Chuck E. Cheese pizza. I almost hurled.
I am not a picky eater, but Chuck E. Cheese pizza is at the bottom of the pizza food chain. I’m sure they make it by buying a dollar Totino’s pizza, dragging it across the floor, dipping it in toilet water and then baking it for five hours at 450 degrees. Bon appetite.
Though I was starving, my survival instincts kicked in and let me know this was not a good idea. So now I was grumpy, surrounded by 3,000 screaming children and knew things were only going to get worse when I saw the infamous Chuck E. Cheese stage.
Standing on a pedestal was a giant robotic Chuck, moving back and forth in the best robot moves I’ve seen since Styx toured. The monstrosity twitched and shuddered and its eyes blinked in a creepy metallic way. Then it turned and looked at me, making me want to run before the thing jumped off the pedestal and started chasing me down while singing a rendition of “Happy Birthday” that was cheerful enough to make Barney throw up.
I actually did turn around to get away from those eyes, those horrible eyes, and to my horror I saw a guy dressed in a Chuck E. Cheese outfit, doing the mambo with 30 kids.
I had to get away from the stage area, so I grabbed my nephew and headed over to the gaming area. This was only a slight improvement.
When I was a kid, the gaming area at Chuck E. Cheese – then Showbiz Pizza – consisted of a ball pit, skee ball and a horse that rocked back and forth for a token. My, how things have changed.
Today, the place is packed with digital games aplenty. Kids and adults alike run around with cups full of tokens and they have that same possessed look compulsive gamblers in Las Vegas have as they rove the slot machines.
The Chuck E. Cheese token machine really isn’t all that different from a slot machine either. You simply insert a $20 bill and a slew of tokens spill out. It’s like the Utah lotto, only better because instead of real money, you get tickets that can be redeemed for completely useless junk that was made 12 years ago in China. Talk about big money.
The really terrifying thing about the token machine is it accepts credit cards. I’m not even kidding. So, if your kid spends all his tokens and is making a fit, instead of disciplining him – novel idea – you can spoil the snot-nosed brat even more by simply swiping the card and getting 40 more tokens. And this is the future of our country? I want out.
I followed my nephew around for about an hour as he hopelessly tried to play games that were far too advanced for him. I kept hoping the place would explode from the sheer amount of noise pressure built up inside, but it didn’t.
Much to my relief, we left not too much later and the din of children screaming slowly left my ears. I had survived.
But then it hit me. I will soon have a child of my own and she will have friends that go to Chuck E. Cheese and then she’ll want a birthday party at Chuck E. Cheese. Help.
Almost as a perverted omen, a Chuck E. Cheese ad appeared in my mailbox two days ago.
There’s just no escaping that dang mouse.
Seth Hawkins is a senior majoring in public relations who is seeking skee ball tips to get the most tickets for his daughter. Questions and comments can be sent to him at seth.h@aggiemail.usu.edu