Arcade Mania

This entry is for The Son, so that when he grows up, he will remember that he owes me big time.

I took half a day off today, and in the usual way, refused to plan how I was going to spend it until the morning itself. At about 10.30am, I realised half of the half-day leave was already over, and we had only managed to watch Tigger and Pooh and play Cow Jumps Over The Moon with The Son. In order to make up for the lacklustre entertainment for the first half of the morning, we (The Longsuffering Maid and I) bundled The Son into a taxi and took him to Parkway Parade for a little bit of arcade fun.

You know it's a kickass arcade when, as you enter, you see another child being physically carried out of the premises by his mother and maid, in tears, kicking and biting his mother's hand. "That will be us in an hour's time", I said, mainly to myself.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, I bought a S$20 stored value card and blew it in 45 minutes on every conceivable game that The Son could think of. He wanted to try everything, even the games of chance (that ended badly). At one point, he was trying to wrestle the gun out of another little boy's hand inside the Jurassic Park game-jeep, and almost got into a fight. Sigh.

Me, I couldn't stop yawning. I yawn just thinking about it now. It just drains me.

And then when we finally ran out of stored value on the card, he tried to pull the card out of my pocket to swipe yet another machine. We bundled him out in tears. Screaming, kicking, whining and then screaming again tears. While riding the escalator down, he unleashed a torrent of toddler wrath that was surprisingly eloquent, actually, considering the circumstances.

"You (point) and you (point) have hurt my feelings! You are being mean to me! Please say sorry. Say sorry! There are so many games here! I want to go back! I don't want to go home!"

"Enough. I'm going to count to one. ONE! Now you better stop, otherwise I'm going to give you a spanking right here right in front of everyone."