one example of why i don’t need kids yet

either that, or the parent i dealt with yesterday was just WAY paranoid…

…it all has to deal with a little addiction of mine i don’t talk about too often.

claw machines

you know – those machines you put a dollar in, and you get to make the little crane thing drop down and pick up stuffed animals? well, around ten years ago i dated a girl that was the fucking MASTER at these things. she taught me how to look at the machine and see if anything was actually retrievable, since when they load them they actually do it in a fairly specific way that makes it to where you actually CAN’T get anything out of them.

i didn’t use this new-found information back then – but ten years later i started to, and we ended up with lots of muppets around the house. most were eventually given to charity. and for the most part i don’t play them any more, but occasionally i get the jones and yesterday was one such day ’since i had a quarter in my pocket.

across from the typical machines is one that’s set up specifically for kids. the claw has a suction cup, and let’s you play with a token the store folk give you over and over again until you actually score a prize. a woman was in there with her daughter playing it and she won a little necklace at the same time i won a stuffed animal.

but her necklace came out broken.

the muppet did not.

needless to say the little girl was upset. she went back in to the store to see if they would give her another token while her mom waited by the machine. i heard this all behind me, so i turned around and held the cat out to her mom and said, “here, she can have this – i just won it to see if i could.”

she shook her head and said, “no – we don’t take things from strangers”. this was the mom saying this. sounding like she was reciting what her mom told her. with no kid in ear shot, i might add. my response probably needed some mental editing before i said it, but it didn’t receive that courtesy run through the filter.

”lady, i just pulled in out of the machine right in front of you…it’s not like i loaded it with razor blades and drugs…”

okay, that didn’t go over well. and i probably shouldn’t have wrapped up with…

”…and it’s not like i’m cruising the internet trying to pick up your girl, i’m just trying to balance out claw machine injustice!”

now she looked scared. i just smiled and left. probably not the best way to handle it, but at least no cops got involved, right?

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