Hell with Pizza

My aversion to large groups of children is well documented. I get nervous when I’m out-numbered by people under the age of 16. Heck, when I was a kid I was nervous pretty much all the time while in school, girl scouts and summer camp. I think it explains a great deal.

It’s not that I don’t like children – I’m quite fond of individual children one on one. It’s just the large groups where the adult to child ratio is not 1:1 (or 2:1 for that matter) that I get uneasy.

This past Saturday was hell. On the one hand, there was pizza, on the other it was being served at 11:00 am. And on yet another hand, there was no beer. To top it all off we were at Chuck E Cheese for my niece’s 8th birthday party. Including Tara, there were 19 children in just our party. That’s not counting the two parties that were also being held at the same time, and the kids there that were not part of the parties.

Truth be told, I kind of like Chuck E Cheese. The pizza isn’t all that bad (it’s that good either, but I’ve had worse) and there are games. I’m not gamer per se. I have a Nintendo Wii and a DSi, and from what my friends “in the know” have told me, that doesn’t mean a whole bunch in the gaming world. But give me a game of Ski Ball or Wheel of Fortune and I’m in my element. I actually made up excuses to go to the arcade at Disney so I could win more tickets. By the time we left, I had won a two foot tall Mickey for Tara, two Matador Mickeys and a load of random arcade crap. I was a bit worried the staff thought I was a child molester.

It’s the surplus of knee-high children hopped up on a mix of caffeine and sugar along with carbs and cheese that makes the experience less than palatable. Add in a camera happy sister and mother (mom at least understands my camera aversion) along with the general lack of coffee, and I was not a happy camper. I drove, so my original plan of bringing a flask wasn’t going to happen. You can say a lot of things about me, but I at least try not to drink before noon, and I absolutely don’t drive when intoxicated.

All told, I blew about $15 of my own money in tokens, and was given a fresh infusion from my sister. I became the game ringer, earning tickets for the kids who didn’t have the attention span for the less interesting but higher ticket yielding games. At one point I resembled a gerbil hitting the food bar trying to get more food pellets. I knew I was out of control when a cherub came up to me and told me she wanted to play the game I had been hogging – I checked myself, wiped the sweat from my brow (hey, competitive Ski Ball is hard!) and yielded control of the game to her. I went back to my other favorite past time, stuffing my face with pizza and diet coke.

During the break, I got to sit back and watch the kids. When Chuck E Cheese made his appearance, it was pretty cool, even I have to admit that. For those kids it was as if David Beckham had descended shirtless from on high, but less sweaty and a bit furrier. They paraded around, sang along with the party crew and feasted on cake. Ahhh…to be 8 again.

After the chaos, I grabbed my mother and we high-tailed it out there, thrilled that there was no guilt in skipping out on helping with the clean up. As I type this, I’m actually craving rubber pizza and wanting to play games that I know I’ll never hit the jackpot on. I’m wondering what it would take to get a liquor license for them and have the next work happy hour hosted there.

Oh well, a girl can dream. Maybe AC is more up my alley.