Child Gamblers

I don't even know why you have to be 21 to gamble at a casino. They let five year olds into Chuck E. Cheese, after all. Arcade games are the gambling locale of choice for the school age crowd. And that sugary root beer and caffeinated Mountain Dew might as well be booze, considering the effect it has on children's behavior. When you give your ten year old seven bucks, take him to Chuck E. Cheese, and buy him a soda, you might as well be handing him a hundred dollar bill, driving him to Spirit Mountain Casino, and ordering him a Jack Daniels. And then when he's 17 you wonder why he blows his money on dumb looking shoes and is drinking Pabst at high school parties. It all started somewhere.

Picture this: your kid is playing a Whack-A-Mole, and he begs you for just one more quarter so he can try to win those 30 tickets. Because when he has 55 tickets he'll be able to buy the glow in the dark light up helicopter. How is that not like gambling? Adults take risks; they think "just one more time" in a disastrous logic to make a profit.

Kids stand there, eyes mesmerized by the colorful glow of the lights, feeding their nickles and quarters into the machines, trying to win against the odds. Meanwhile, parents stand idly by at the table, eating pizza and chatting with their mom friends about their muffin top. Or worse yet, they let their middle school children go to the arcade alone. No one is there to tell them that blowing $40 bucks worth of quarters is not worth having your name appear on the game's top score. That girl they have a crush on is never going to go to Pietro's Pizza and look up the scores on Hyper Street Fighter II.

The floor of Chuck E. Cheese

The floor of a casino. The only difference is that the chairs are more comfortable and probably less sticky.

 Kids run around whacking things, throwing things, driving things, shooting things, and contracting early forms of HPV via activities in the ball pit, all for a price. Because collecting tickets is all that matters to them. You don't want to be the one kid with ten tickets when the child at the table next to you has a string of 240 bulging out of his back pocket. It makes you feel like a loser. So what the kid does is slam down another Rootbeer and say, "I'm goin' in for another round." Visit a Chuck E. Cheese sometime. I've never seen a place filled with so much determination, frustration, and tears.

Taking children to places where they can throw away money all for the sake of a good time and the chance to win prizes is the first step to creating a mini-gambler. Next thing you know, you'll open your child's door on a Saturday morning to see him suffering from an Orange Pop hangover, moaning about a tummy ache and sprawled out on his bed surrounded by parachute men, stuffed dinosaurs, and plastic yo yos. All this satisfaction for the low, low cost of $39.95

Parents, explain to me, why would you ever take your child to an establishment where a giant rat is the mascot? Did you ever hear of the Bubonic plague?