I Fear The Redemption Gameroom

Our friends Nami and Gus just sent pictures from their birthday party at Malibu Grand Prix in Redwood City a few weeks ago. Here's one of Marco and I posed in front of the final windmill -- as daunting a mini-golf obstacle as there ever was.

For those who've never lived in the South or the West Coast, Malibu Grand Prix is a chain of small "family fun" theme parks. Nami and Gus are both childless and closer to 35 than 13, so you might question why they'd throw a party at a place designed for "family fun." That's just the kind of people they are. They enjoy the kitsch, and normally so do I. This time, however, I found that a trip to a place for large groups of children and their parents took on a whole new meaning.

I enjoyed the batting cages (although I wasn't allowed to bat because they had no belly helmets) and the miniature golf, but the game room left me very uneasy. It's not that I'm not a fan of video games. I am. What bothered me was that all the children there seemed concerned not with winning the games themselves, but with how many tickets would spit out of the machine so they could redeem them for stuff. And let's be honest here. When I say "stuff," what I really mean is "crap." Do you know that they actually call these places "redeption gamerooms?" Does that make anyone else think of church?

It's not like I was protected from this behavior in my own childhood. I remember earning tickets for skee ball and wack-a-mole at Chuck E. Cheese and some place in the mall in West Houston. And, of course, I can't remember what I redeemed those tickets for. But now that I'm on the brink of having my own child, it is totally different. I don't want Baby Morrone to want to win video games so she can redeem tickets for a bunch of plastic stuff she doesn't need. And suddenly the kitsch-value at a place like Malibu Grand Prix no longer exists.

I realize that while it's still several years away, I will soon have a child who will very likely want to go to a place like Malibu Grand Prix and she will not see the irony in it. She may long for those tickets and she might desire plastic crap and there is very little I can do about it, besides deny her. And do I really want to deny her a friend's birthday party because of some vague feeling I have?

I've heard that it doesn't much matter what kind of morals and values you tell your child they should have. They'll end up paying much more attention to the morals and values that you actually display. In other words, they watch what you do more than what you say. So with that I shall say no more.

Comments

[Tim]

Even as a kid, I never liked those crappy little plastic toys. I do recall, however, saving all my tickets from skee-ball over a few years only to find the place closed down when I remembered to cash them in for one of the 'good prizes'.

What a waste. Ever since then, if I play skee-ball (i used to love that game) I handed my tickets over to the kid in the corner with 2 in their hand...desperately wanting more but unable to get them.

[Roikins]

I used to go to that Malibu ALL the time when I was kid... mainly so I could whack golf balls onto the freeway and race around the track in their little go-karts - such foreshadowing. I never was a fan of the video games and skee-ball though. They used to have bumper boats there, but they got rid of them... stupid Malibu.

[Randy]

come to my website at http://randytown.vze.com

-Randy
Randytown Webmaster
http://randytown.vze.com

[Ralph]

Ohhhh, my friend, you have only just begun with the mind-numbing dilemma's.
Oh all the 'been there, done that's' that I could give you,it would only make for more brain-wear.

As for me now, I am stuck on things like:

Why do drugstores make the sick walk to the back of the store for prescriptions, but healthy people can buy cigarettes at the front?

How is it that a pizza can get to your house faster than an ambulance?

If the #2 pencil is so popular, why is it #2 ?

(Glad your not to this point in your life, yet?)

HUMPTY DUMPTY WAS PUSHED!
Darkstar,
http://www.darkstar.us

[Lisa]

Ok, I admit.. I am 43 and still loving those little tickets to win the crap. ;) Ok, well, lets put it this way.. I dont do it for myself but I love winning tickets to give to the daughter of a family friend of ours. I have more fun seeing her eyes light up when I'd help win her more and more tickets, than if I won them for myself. LOL! But does that make it that I am "corrupting" her in some way? Naah, not in my opinion. This little girl only does this a few times a year.. birthday being one of them, like when we go to Shakeys. And she has soo much fun. Why not? She won't be young forever. And she isnt being harmed nor harming anyone. It's just plain fun to play and win those tickets and trade them in for some toy they'll probably get tired of in a week. ;)

[Justin]

OK, I admit it... I was a ticket addict.

I never really did the arcade thing much, but when I was heading over to the Dream Machine in the Bangor Mall all I wanted out of Skee-Ball was those darn tickets. I loved the sound as they streamed out of the machine and the feel of them in my hands... [ahem] Anyway, when it did come time to redeem them I went for the valuable things; I saved up a couple thousand so I could buy myself a cassette player. We had to put it to sleep in the trash can a couple years back, but it was good while it lasted.

Any reasoning I now give will probably sound like an attempt at a justification for my exploits of the past, but I'll give it a go anyway. I think, in a way, the ticket system allows children to realize that in order to buy (or trade for) something, you have to work for it. I think what you should spend your time educating Baby Morrone about should be how building up to a prize will yield a better reward (ie, a tape player is better than a plastic watch). Will it lead to sound financial strategies in the future? Dunno. Maybe all the prizes are crap nowadays anyway.

Glad to see you're exposing Baby Morrone to mini-golf at a very early age, too.

[Wesley]

I use to go to a place called Celebration station and I would play a game that was easy and spit out tons of tickets. And what I would do is hog that game till I was out of tokens and I would give my tickets to other people because the stuff they had there was crap and all the nice stuff was like 2000 tickets and its impossible to get that many unless you spend lots of money which you end up spending more money then it cost to make the stuff...

[Mx]

First, I must say, this is my first reply to jumpingmonkeys from Mozilla. I watched the thing on January Second about how and why to do it, although I was pre-occupied with the LAN party (ROCK ON DAN!) since I was at the show (ROCK ON MEGAN!)! So yeah, that's been said. We have Scandia's, yeah, family fun things. Here are my three favorite moments, one of which had to do with winning tickets.

1) When I was little my mom called me Tomagado, it stuck, and my main e-mail addy is tomagado@blahblahblah.com . I asked her if she had any nicknames, and it turned out that her grandpa called her a pink haired doll. Well, I remembered that, and one time I went to Scandia with my dad to have some fun. I scoped out the prizes first and lo and behold there was a little pink haird doll. I used almost all my money trying desperately to get enough tickets to get the doll, and after a long time (I was little, it was probably 5 minutes) I ran out of money. I ran up, and tada, I had enough tickets. I took it home, gave it to mom, and she still treasures it. Yup :-D

2)On a seperate occasion we met with my Aunt and a child she was baby sitting for the day. We went on the water boats to battle. My mom and I shared the boat, and after we got through with it, we realized why we ended up so much more wet. We exceded the weight limit by 100lbs. Heh heh heh.

3)Last trip we got on the go karts, my grandpa (bad driver), dad (bad driver) and my self (Future Nascar Driver) Heh. Anyway, my grandpa wouldn't me me pass, he really wanted to win, I got tired of it, took a risky move around a tree, got on him at a corner, I slammed my nose into the back of his kart, and he spun out (LOL LOL LOL LOL). It was one of the funniest things ever. Yup, good stuff.

Anyway, yeah, it doesn't what matter morals you tell baby-ronne to have, she'll learn from you, and that being said, I can say that with my brief meeting with you, baby-ronne will be a great person :-)

[Space Monkey]

I'm struck by the irony of an electric-powered windmill.

I should learn to duck these jabs of inconsequential enlightenment.

[Doug]

Megan:
Although I have no children, I think your last paragraph nailed it. Try and set a good example, even though you have your faults. Children are so perceptive; they soak up even the smallest actions like a sponge. Every day life is what molds them into the people they will become. My parents had many faults but had some good values and loved their kids. I think I turned out ok.

[MikeFromMichigan]

>When I say "stuff," what I really mean is "crap."

Ooh! I don't know about that. Sometimes you can snag a lucky rabbit's foot or fuzzy dice. I once got a black and a white rabbit feets (that's an awkward sentence). Fuzzy dice were a ripoff though. You had to wait till nobody was looking and run up and drop balls into the center ring of those ball rolling thingies. Then grab that massive coil of tickets and go redeem them for the good stuff that sparsely populates those glass cases of foreign-made trinkets that cost $0.05 for a gross. That reminds me of my brother. He once spent $20 on one of those claw machines and all he got a freakish orange stuffed animal that nobody can identify the species of to this day.

[Dale]

Telling a child to do what you say, and not what you do, is contradictory and confusing. Setting an everyday good example of social interaction and family life is of utmost importance, because the parents are the role models for what a child is destined to become.

“When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things."

From an adult perspective, we fail to see beyond the cheap plastic toys and the commercialism that put them there. After all, we are adults now and this is the real world. As children, we saw these were wondrous treasures that were just out of our reach. The tickets were the means to claim them as our own; no matter how many it would take to retrieve the bounty. To forget simple things are exciting to a child is to lose sight of our own innocence and youth. As adults with responsibilities to assume and deadlines to meet, we are destined to try and recapture the unexplainable and unexpected joys of childhood. Few of us will and cherish our memories of it. Let a child be a child.

[Ouabaio]

you're right, i think. just keep in mind that kids are not shrunken adults, they're kids and they like kid stuff, like playing games for tickets and redemption. baby morrone will have plenty of time to be an adult when the time comes.

[David Saylock]

I remember such places. Where I used to live, the entity took on the name of "Blaster's", and on the walls near the ceiling there would be the "quality-stuff-that-takes-forever-to-attain-and-can-only-be-obtained-by-the-uBer-leet" items. One of them was a dragon. Because my parents were dragon fanatics, they obviously wanted such an item, and worked for about six months to obtain said item. Meanwhile, me being of the ripe age of 13, spent that six months imagining what exactly I would do with such a thing once it was won. I figured if nothing else, I would be able to talk to it (I was lonely).
Well, they finally achieved their goal, and the dragon came home. Only to sit in the corner of out sectional and collect dust.
It makes me sad just to think about it.

[parliboy]

I've never been a ticket addict, fortunately. I live in Louisiana, where if you really want the cheap crap, you just have to wait until Mardi Gras and punk out the 6 year-old in front of you on the parade route for his booty.

Hopefully you'll be able to educate Morrone the younger as to just how much it costs to just buy the crap outright compared to how much she'll spend. Wishful thinking, perhaps, but ya never know.

As to the Malibu Grand Prix, I lived within walking distance of one when living in Houston in '92. When I wanted a change of scenery from the Street Fighter machine at the corner store or the Tilt in the mall, I would take a longer walk up to what was then a truly awesome assortment of pinball and classic games.

I never did get into the miniature golf course there. I was spoiled on the superiority that is Putt-Putt (played some years on the regional tour). Tis a shame there's so few out west.

[Kat]

Don't deny those treasures to your child. In her eyes..every chunk of plastic will be solid gold. Not only can you teach values..you can teach math, science (it takes a real understanding of gravity and physics to hit that little hole in the center)and the reward of waiting to amass the "currency" of the moment to get something. Turn the "junk" into treasures for her. Every moment of motherhood doesn't have to be teaching. See the gems and take that time to be a kid with her. Place the value on her joy and yours, not whether she wins 5 tickets and gets the 1000th plastic bracelet that snaps before you get back to the car.

My son will graduate from high school in two months. My daughter is a married woman. They are both responsible and wonderful human beings, who giggle like five year olds when they fight for the neon pink dog toy that drops through the claw machine. They each have boxes filled with "junk" from their childhood. I also have a jewelry box filled with plastic rings and other precious gifts they've given me. They can both tell you the event and circumstances surrounding every one of them.

[WheelMan]

When I was a kid, my family and I used to go to Daytona Beach on vacation frequently, and they have a big arcade/game room place down on the boardwalk there. My parents used to play skeeball a lot, and I guess it was fun watching them, but I never really get into those kinds of places all that much. Just too noisy for me.

Then again, the fact that most of those games aren't set up for someone in a wheelchair didn't help either, I suppose.

[Shelley Bezjian]

I just loved this entry...My son who is six loves the small "crap" sometimes almost more than the big plastic pieces of "crap" he's gotten for Christmas. Bouncy balls, plastic spider rings, those parachute men that you throw up in the air that are supposed to come gliding down but never work, I could go on and on...they're all in his treasure bucket, and the sweetest thing in the world is when he's turning in those tickets at Chuck E Cheese, and he surprises me with one of those "treasures". They are all stowed away in MY treasure bucket! :) Don't worry about it Megan, you'll learn to love the treasures! :)

Shelley

[WheelMan]

Actually, some of my favorite toys was tiny little pieces of crap (aside from Legos, that is :) ). Sometimes the crappy stuff is better because it gives the kid a chance to use her imagination more than one of those walking, talking, wetting, whatever toys that you basically push a button and watch it go off on its own.

Sometimes what qualifies as crap depends upon one's perspective, I guess.

[stew schneider]

I've raised two children: a boy and a girl. My son, who died in 1999, would be a bit older than you are now. My daughter is 15. I want you to know how very right you are in your observations. Your daughter will see everything you do, and will remember it somewhere. If, in the main, you do decent, right and loving things, she will grow up decent, right and loving. If you have moments of impatience, followed by an admission that you were just having a bad day, she will still grow up decent, right and loving. It is our job, as parents, not to build a house for our children to live in, but to build a firm foundation for them to build their own houses upon. If you do your job, the house they build will be strong and protective and your daughter will live long and well in it.

Oh, and thanks for the photo of Marco. To my very great surprise, I see you have married my friend Roger's son, Ted. I wonder if his wife, Stephanie, is aware of this??

stew

[Brenton]

I think that there are probably more morals and values to worry about then plastic toy redemption for tickets. The adults in my life, while existing as a child, never displayed behavior of winning tickets and using them for crap. Nor did any other adults in that pizza facility, however I still did it. Probably more influenced by my peers rather then parents.

[Dennis]

I have to interject. You must tell your children right and wrong, in addition to showing them by your behavior. Even if you yourself don't live up to your own standards, do not lower the bar for your children.

Here's a simple example. If you're a smoker, like my mom is, you don't let your kids smoke. If they say, "But Mom, why is it ok for your to smoke?" then say, "It's not ok that I smoke. It causes me poor health and it makes my clothes smell bad and I have had a very hard time every time I've tried to quit. I will try to do better, but at least I can keep you from going down the wrong path."

Take it from this non-smoker: yeah, they listen to your example, but they listen to your words, too.

[Joe]

I used to enjoy the Chuck E. Cheese experience, especially the San Jose Churck E. Cheese 'University'. I used to get tons of Jaw Breakers with my redemption tickets.
Now I take my kids and try to teach them to wash their hands, etc. before eating while going there, or after going there because every time they go to a kid's party they wind up with Flourescent Green Snot and a cold for 3 weeks.
THE Nerve of some people taking their sick kids there!
By the way - to those that rebell against the authority of the president by going against his directives and positions in decisions in this country deserve it to come back at them 100 fold when they expect their children to obey them!
You reap what you sew!

[Ryan]

My wife and I love taking our kids to Chuck E. Cheese and mini golf when we can. They're six and five. We adopted them in July 2001 and thank God daily for bringing them into our lives. I wish you and Marco all the best!

[Rob]

Ok
1) Those aren't garbage in every case. To a child, with their imagination those plastic "craps" can be hours and hours of fun. (I for one remember playign with toy soldiers and paratroops always. )

2) Maybe its just because I play Grand Theft Auto too much but in that picture Marco looks a lot like the main character from Grand Theft Auto 3.

Best wishes for you two and the new baby.
Rob.