Arcade

Jack was home on Tuesday and it was really hot, although I guess it was actually the coolest day of the week, hurrah. So I thought we'd get out of the house and go to an air-conditioned arcade at Playland. Alas, the air-conditioned arcade was closed, so we had to make do with the one on the Boardwalk. Where it was remarkably hot and nobody else was around, oddly enough.

So anyway, we had the arcade Boardwalk to ourselves! Of course, we tried to win these cool stuffed toys in the claw machine, and I absolutely would have if the things weren't rigged to drop the Angry Bird stuffed toys even if you picked them up perfectly; I really don't understand it.

We moved on to Skee-Ball. I taught Jack to play, which was fun; if memory serves the last time I played was at an arcade we went to on the night of my bachelor party; I know, pretty crazy! So I taught Jack to play and we spent $3 to almost win a rubber ball that I paid $2 for at Target last month. Jack cleverly (craftily?) had this idea that we could roll both sets of game balls down the same lane to get one prize, but sadly the machine counted how many balls were thrown, so no go. It worries me a little that he's already thinking of ways to beat the system, but in fairness the claw machine was rigged so he's only responding in kind.

We played a racing game where we sat in car seats next to each other and zoomed on a video track. Jack couldn't figure out why he wasn't going anywhere until I helped him stretch his foot to reach the pedal. Then he did pretty well, if by pretty well you mean colliding with me and other cars on a regular basis, but I think we started doing it on purpose because it was pretty cool. We laughed a lot.

We played air hockey, which was OK, but he's not quite tall enough to reach very far. We played pinball, which was nostalgic for me and essentially impossible for him; again, not quite tall enough to see the whole playing arena. And we played some other scam game where you had to hit a button when the red lightbulb was lit up, which we were successful at, uh, not at all.

And last but not least, we went into the picture booth, the first time I'd done that in oh about 25 years, and got some great pictures of us making goofy faces.



On the way home, Jack said, "You know, it wasn't fair that we didn't win that Angry Bird stuffed toy. But, it was still fun."