The Chuck E. Cheese Story

There are decisions you make when you are younger that you can only make when you are of a certain age. As one gets older and one tends to take stock of themselves, you tend to shake your head at the foolish things you did. So, with that in mind I give you my Chuck E. Cheese story.

One night in my early twenties myself, my friend Wally and our co-worker Schlie (his name was Andrew but we always called him by his last name) were set to head out on a Friday night to the bars in the Lincoln Park area. I was just out of De Paul I believe at this point but, still was visiting a number of my old haunts. Schlie lived in the area. He also worked with us at IRI.

We were all set to head up to Schlie’s apartment after work and then eventually head out on the town for a night, of drinking, ogling Trixies and other male debauchery. We got to Schlie’s and had a couple of beers there. We bullshited and started mapping out our plans for the evening. At some point we figured we had better grab a bite to eat before getting our drink on. It was at that point Schlie suggested a Chuck E. Cheese that was within walking distance.

His argument consisted of, it was cheap and they had beer on tap. Three guys in their early twenties getting a table together at Chuck E. Cheese with no children in their party is well, creepy. Why this didn’t dawn on us at the time I have no idea. The lure of cheap eats and beer was all we thought about. So, we decided to head there.

We grabbed a table and ordered a pitcher of beer and some pizzas ignoring the concerned look of the parents nearby us. With our order came some free game tokens. So, after eating some really, really bad pizza, I took the tokens into the gaming area. I have always been a pop-a-shot God. Some are good at ski ball while others excel at the vaunted whack-a-mole. Pop-a-shot has always been my game.

For those not familiar with the concept, pop-a-shot is a basketball shooting game. You usually get 3-4 balls and a time limit. You usually have like 40 seconds to sink as many shots as possible, earning points for each successful shot. Based on how many points you obtain you are rewarded tickets which you can redeem for a toy, candy or a stuffed animal.

The irony in all of this is, I suck at basketball but pop-a-shot is my game. I sharpened my skills due to the copious amount of time I spent in the late 80’s playing the game at Haunted Trails. Years later, I was at Dave and Busters at a work outing for Harris Bank and I beat all challengers. I must have won fifteen games in a row. When I get in the zone I just don’t miss. Anyway, I saw the pop-a-shot at Chuck E. Cheese and since I had some free tokens I figured I would play a quick game.

As a result of my play, I won some tickets. Not really needing some Laffy Taffy or a stuffed Tasmanian Devil, I gave the tickets to some random kid. The next thing I know, I had every kid in the place giving me tokens so that I could win him or her some tickets. I looked and I soon had a line of kids longer then the wait to get on the Eagle at Great America.

I just kept shooting. Wally and Schlie were playing some air hockey or something. In the meantime my right arm was falling off as I kept feeding tokens into the machine so these kids could get some tickets. The funny thing is none of this seemed odd at the time.

I wound up spending what should have been quality time tipping back some beverages playing pop-a-shot. Here I was at a Chuck E. Cheese with a bunch of nine year olds bitching that I won the last kid twelve tickets while I only won him eleven. It was surreal.

Eventually we headed out and got drunk as planned. I can’t remember where we went or who we ran into or anything like that. The only detail I do remember from that night was the excursion to Chuck E. Cheese. The more and more I told people of this, the more quizzical looks I got. In today’s environment the manager would have probably called the cops on us just for showing up without any kids of our own. But back in the early 90’s (in the days before NBC’s Dateline) child molesters were able to roam much more freely.