Rat does cheese

I have vivid memories of my youth.  My parents were deeply in love, New Jersey winters never got below 60 degrees, and Chuck E Cheese next to Bradlees in Hackensack was the shit.  I remember insisting on having my birthday there, year after year, even the year my birthday fell on Yom Kippur (Oct 6th, 1984). I'm Reform so it's ok.

Everything about my childhood might be a lie but this is how I remember it.  Chuck E Cheese was this dark cavernous place that had miles of video games (Zaxon, Star Wars), and a ball pit 8 feet deep.  It was a place where my ADHD was embraced.  Sure, I was yelled at for punching an animatronic rat in the face and for jumping out of a helicopter ride when it was five feet off the ground, but that doesn't mean it wasn't awesome.  It was a time when hand sanitizing consisted of wiping pizza grease on your dad's leg while trying to avoid being ashed on.  Yup, you could smoke there.  There were no bracelets, to identify whose kid was whose.  Hell, if your parents came home with the same group of kids they brought, the party was considered lame.  It was a simpler time.  A time when buying weed off a twelve year old was normal.

With all that in mind, you can see why I would be happy when my three year old asked me to go to Chuck E Cheese the other day.  I finally could settle that score I had with Jasper T. Jowls, while my daughter  learned to swim in a ball pit that surely hadn't been cleaned since the Reagan administration.  Sadly though, neither dream could be realized.  The rabid rat has become nothing more than timid mouse.  Where once stood Donkey Kong lies Mario Cart.  Where once was a ball pit, there is a slide. Where once was a greasy Italian making fresh pizza is a microwave serving stouffer's.  Where there once was darkness, there are lightbulbs.  Sure the animatronic rat is still there, but my daughter felt a wave was better than punch.  What has the world come to?  They stamped our hands when we walked in and asked my daughter who I was when we left to ensure I wasn't stealing her. Come on people, we were the only white ones there.

This really is making me rethink where to have my 38th birthday.



*I just realized, it might have been Showbiz Pizza where I had all my birthdays growing up.  I can't remember anything correctly.