Tickets, please

This week I did my first true stay-at-home mom activity: I took Ladybug to Chuck E. Cheese in the middle of a work day. It was great – there was hardly anybody there!

I love Chuck E. Cheese. It reminds me of a similar place my parents used to take my brother and me when we were kids. Rivertown had giant animal puppets on stage, and I seem to remember a rather risqué lady cat in a bustier who worked in what I’m now convinced was a feline brothel.

But that kind of stuff went over my head back then. All I cared about was playing Skee Ball and Whack-A-Mole and winning tickets to redeem for plastic junk.

Chuck E. Cheese has all that same charm. Yeah, their pizza is gross and the mozzarella sticks are always cold in the middle and they have the same two-bit prizes, but there’s something about the sound of tokens dropping in machines and kids climbing through the overhead tunnels that is euphoric.

We celebrated Ladybug’s first birthday at Chuck E. Cheese and have been back a couple times since but always on the weekend when it’s jam-packed. Getting to go when other parents were at work felt kind of naughty, like I was playing hooky.

And it felt good.