This—this green turtle—would become the bane of our evening.
It all started when we visited our local fun-and-games pizza place a few nights ago. It’s a pizza buffet with all kinds of arcade games, bumper cars, mini golf, etc. Each kid received $5 and 20 minutes to play games, and then it would be time to go home. Blair spotted a green turtle in a crane game and decided THIS was what she wanted to spend her money on.
I guess she assumed everyone walked away a winner. Boy was she wrong. Jeremy, who is quite the accomplished crane game grabber (back in our pre-kid days, one could often find us at the entrance of any grocery store, feeding our hard-earned coins into the slot of a crane game, and usually walking away a winner. But by “winner” I mean grabbing a Harley Davidson eagle or a red, white, and blue dog, so it’s all relative) decided to give it a go for her.
One play. Two plays. Maybe three plays a charm? Not even close. $20 and lots of tears later…
we finally had to cut our losses and walk away, much to Blair’s dismay. (Yes, I’m sure it’s mean taking a picture of my bawling, distraught daughter in her time of need but it was such a ridiculous thing to cry over that I couldn’t resist.) We were ready to head for the exit until we caught a glimpse of this gigantic life-size crane game. (You can see Jeremy playing it through the window.) Its huge-ness drew us in like a moth to a flame, and we were hooked for another 10 bucks. We had some promising grabs, but no luck in snagging a big one. (It’s pathetic how big of suckers we are. Think of how many real toys we could have bought with that $30!)
More tears ensued. So when we got home, Jeremy being the hero dad that he is, dug around the garage and found an old stuffed animal that we won in a crane game years ago, and gave it to her. Blair and “Black Cookie” (she named it, not me) now live happily ever after.
Oh, and while we were wasting all our money on the elusive stuffed turtle, Sloane was trying to earn it back for us in, um, other ways. Hey, she has to work her way through med school somehow.
2 comments:
I cannot believe how obsessed you are with the crane game. Have I ever told you about Todd's brother Ky. He plays these like crazy too. He loves to take the nieces and nephews to play the crane game. It's funny! They will stand in the entrance to Walmart all night winning things for the kids!
I know! It quickly becomes less about the item and more about not letting the game get the better of you. Which I guess is what it does in the end when you end up feeding it 30 bucks! :)
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