Throw Down at Chuck E Cheese

During lunch with a friend who is a stay-at-home mom, she mentioned how much she loves the Louisiana Mom’s Club. It’s a website with a daily calendar of where local mom’s are meeting that day, so all the kids can have fun together with friends. It also has bulletin boards where everyone can vent as to what carpet got ruined, what lamp was shattered, and what child was rushed to the hospital with an M & M stuck up his nose.

I was enthralled at such a neat idea. Of course, it’s too late for me, but it would have been an invaluable lifeline years ago when I was what seemed like one of the few mom’s on the planet looking to have lunch with others while our kids got lost in the upper reaches of the McDonald’s ballpit.

Back then, every day I would throw the boys in the car and take them to lunch somewhere with a playplace. I had a friend with two girls, and they were our sidekicks most afternoons for fun and visiting. But, plenty of times, one of us couldn’t make it.

Once it was a Chuck E Cheese date. My friend told me she would try, but didn’t know how long her doctor’s appointment would take. So I took the boys by myself. Chuck E Cheese was pretty empty that day other than two other women with their young children. I chose a booth by the window where I could keep watch for my friend, and the boys headed off to the games and rides.

From the booth I see my 2 year old son galloping happily across the floor with a string of tickets in his chubby hand. He drops them, and with the delayed reaction of a 2 year old, begins looking around for them. Before recovering them, one of the other hyperactive, ill mannered, other boys zoomed in, and in a foaming mouthed frenzy, grabs them and leaps into the booth behind his mother.

My son starts to cry, but before I get up, my 5 year old sees what happened and I watch as he kindly puts his arm around his little brother and steers him to the table with the other moms. My heart swells with love, and I sit back to watch. His hands gestured wildly at the replayed events as he explained about the tickets. Then, abashed, I see the other mother wave her finger in his face and send my sons away. My heart stopped and my chest constricted while my boys came to tell me that the mom had told them those were not their tickets and to get lost.

Now, I well realized that these tickets were worth all of about 3 cents, but my sons were looking to me for righting the wrong and I had to step up. Giving them my calmest smile, I guided them across the room, while mentally calculating how to land the best punch and whether I could take on two women and possibly an irate Chuck E Cheese. Where or where was my friend, Teresa?

I explained to the woman what I had seen and she flew at me in a verbal barrage of insults, they were her son’s tickets, mine was a brat, threw the tickets in my face, and headed for the pizza counter. I contemplated pile driving her into the ballpit, or taking the high road while my son’s were watching. I was never much one for high roads. And I desperately wished Teresa would show.

Throwing the tickets on the table, I told her friend it was obvious the kid was growing up like his mother. Grabbing my sons, I went back to my table. Only to be attacked by the friend over my insult to a mother. Yes, I knew I had gone over the top, but now I had two women that seriously disliked me. But they didn’t know that my alter ego was Chuck Norris and, berate me all they wanted, only due to my supreme self control would I not tie them up into a pretzel and leave them stuffed in the slide. I did manage to convey that image and they hurried away. But I really missed Teresa.

Now as I sat across from my friend at lunch, it crossed my mind, that on that fateful day all I would have needed was to Yahoo Louisiana-moms-club, and there would have been a whole list of friends for my tag team at the throw down at Chuck E Cheese.