Where A Kid Can Be A Kid

Here at Chuck E Cheese, we see who the "kids" really are:

Campers was offering to walk up the skee ball machine to put the balls in the high-scoring holes. That's my boy. Always-a-thinkin' how to win. Now we just need to tweak the integrity issue a bit...

Meanwhile, Susie is saying "FEED ME" and Ma Senior is saying "OKAY!"

And then Pa Senior had to impress us all at the pinball machine.

Which reminds me of the infamous pinball game story.

Take note: I didn't say interesting story, just infamous.

So when I was a kid, my dad (Pa Senior) would take my brother and me to pick my mom (Ma Senior) up from work on Friday nights. Then we'd go to Pool's Pizza (please, anyone, someone tell me you remember that place) for dinner and eat, well, you know, pizza.

It was there that they had a pinball game, where my brother and I learned to revere our dad as The King Of The Machine.

One night, someone had left the pinball machine with a quarter already in it, so we started to play. And we kept playing and playing and playing and playing (said like Forrest Gump) and winning and winning and winning and it became The Pinball Game That Would Not Stop.

Great for the ego, that game was. Maybe not so good for the waistline, as we also happened to be eating in between all this winning. And because I have such a great memory for details, I don't remember how the night ended. Did we finally lose? Or were there more balls to be played when we left the pizza shop?

Oh, my family will have to bail me out again. I've got the memories! Just not the details.

Fun times, fun times.

So anyhoo, here's the beloved machine, and everyone looking on with awe:

Course, any mistakes Pa Senior might have made could have been due to the three-person fan club he had hanging from his every limb.

But it's the stuff that (sketchy and scattered) memories are made of, yessirree.