Gonna Have a Good Time

I am 36 years old. I can remember when Chuck-e-cheez' was new. It was an arcade, with a separate room where you ate pizza and watched an anamatronic show doing a cover of the Beatles birthday song. I remember in about 5th grade that my parents let me invite a boy from my class (totally chaperoned of course!) and that he thought my parents were cool for taking us there. I remember conquering Miss Pacman and turning in my ski-bowl tickets for prizes, I remember thinking Chuck-e-cheez' was simply the greatest. Fast forward 26 years and now here I am back at Chuckee Cheez' as a parent. I notice things I didn't notice as a kid - for one, it's LOUD in there, like crazy lose your mind loud. In a lot of ways it is kind of like a casino for small children. A lot has changed, the games and the technology - for instance they have a blue screen where kids can be in a video and the pizza room is now out in the open. They stamp parents and kids with a matching number in blacklight ink so no adults can leave with the wrong kids (safe - but sad that it's necessary you know?). They don't have pitchers of beer for sale like they did when I was a kid (not that I drank as a kid but I remember they had that, more like a pizza parlor than a suburban birthday venue back then) Honestly, whenever we are invited for a party there Will and I kind of look at each other - like, oh, Chuckee Cheez'. Jacob, on the other hand, LOVES it. For days leading up to and after the party he will yell "BOOM CHICKA BOOM BOOM CHUCKEE CHEEZ'" over and over. The pizza tables are always impossibly crowded together. It can be kind of a madhouse. You can't hear yourself think. This past Saturday at the height of the pandemonium Jacob tries to tell me something.. I lean in, "What? What? I can't hear you Jacob!" So he wraps his arms around my neck, pulling me in for a hug and shouts "I said, ISN'T THIS GREAT?"

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