[Hi gang! I don’t wanna run a whole friggin’ website anymore, all I ever wanted was to make with the fake lies, yelling, and jokes that aren’t worth the legwork for the people, to be a simple blogger. To that end, you can now find me over at The Naming Way courtesy of the truly excellent Pika, alongside such Dudes of Quality as Brenden! It’s The Bageler will stay up until my subscription runs out next year and I’ll continue to cross-post until then; thank you all for reading, and I hope to see you over at my new pad!]
…it feels weird not to start posts with the Blaugust spiel; guess I gotta hold that sneeze in for a year.
I have for you today A NICE REMEMBRANCE of a time past, when someone was maybe not the kindest to me in my whole life, but maybe took the most pity on me, and I’ll never forget it.
THE YEAR: Two-Thousand-And-Mumble, as I walk up and down Valley Central Way collecting applications in my very first job-hunt. I am like 16 or 17, it is Southern California in summer so I am Overwarm and badly in need of an air-conditioned place to sit and memorize my Social Security Number by virtue of writing it six thousand fucking times, including on the very application that would get me hired at my first of three Blockbusters, advancing me to the Pupal stage of my kind.
Due to the heat I wasn’t hungry—and in any event I sure didn’t have that Black Angus or Staples money—but fortunately I knew an old friend lived in the neighborhood and could hook me up, and his name was Charles. Entertainment. Cheese.
For non-Americans and others who have never caught pinkeye in a ball-pit, Chuck E. Cheese’s is a kind of child-casino/indoor-playground/germ-warfare laboratory where obviously ill toddlers play arcade games to win tickets and exchange them for prizes or, if they had a damn lick of sense, spend all of their hubristically-overpriced tokens on the skeeball¹ machine. They also sold pizza and presumably other food, and quite remarkably also offered beer and wine, which parents presumably needed in order to endure Lester’s Possum-Park Jug-Band Jamboree Munch’s Make-Believe Band, an animatronic musical fever-dream that played five times a night, and lingered in the mind long thereafter. Many a kid had a birthday-party there in their dining-hall, and came home with an exciting new rash, norovirus, or story of seeing something watching them from the shadows beneath the slide.
I made my way inside, shot a ‘sup to the slidemonster and approached the bouncer whose job was to stamp every single hand that passed the turnstile with UV-ink, because—and I mean this sincerely—they took security VERY seriously for obvious, depressing reasons and had to be sure that nobody left with anybody they weren’t supposed to.
Anyway, I approached with my stack of applications and said “Hi, look, I do not have a human child with me and that is for the best; I just need a place to sit and fill these out; would it be alright if I came in, had something to drink, and did some paperwork?” The Mousetre d’, who in my head will always be A Lady but was probably mid-20s at most, very kindly assured me that this would be perfectly fine, they’d be happy to have me, please, come come, chep chep. She showed me to a table where I settled in, and then—here’s the part I’ll never, ever forget—brought me a cup to use at the soda-fountain, placed it on my table with no discussion of payment (which I believe should’ve been necessary before the cup could be dispensed), and excused herself to let me set about trading my time for the pay I get and livin’ on money that I ain’t made yet.
This was and is remarkable to me because when I’d said “come in and have a drink”, what I meant was “buy a drink to earn the right to be here”, but she either heard “I cannot buy a drink, could I please have one anyway” or she knew what I meant and decided to extend me completely unnecessary but very much appreciated hospitality, and either way it was maybe the classiest treatment I’ve ever received. In all likelihood, employees probably got free drinks and she was just happy to extend the courtesy, or maybe they had a policy about giving drinks to people who ask like Starbucks does. Whatever the reason, it was a small kindness in a moment of (admittedly very small-scale) desperation; I’m pretty sure it was the moment I fell in love with hospitality as a concept, and I’ve never forgotten it. She made me feel welcome, and she didn’t have to.
I hope Cool Chuck E. Cheese Lady got through the Pandemic okay and is out there takin’ ‘er easy for all us sinners; actually, I’d pay good money to watch a documentary about how Chuck E. Cheese and other child-play-place businesses survived Covid, although I’d wager that many of them simply did not. Regardless, I’ll always be grateful to her for the beverage² and the lesson; I’m not trying to educate the world, but I am trying to make it better, and what she did that day is a part of why and how. Who knows whose why and how you could be? Who knows how many worlds you could make better and kinder? Only one way to find out.
Tossing somebody’s toddler to the slidemonster and getting in line for a glass of cold Rosé and a whole hand’s worth of those spider–rings,
— C.W.
¹ You know what skeeball is, don’t fucking start with me:
² Fun fact I just learned, ‘beverage’ technically means ‘any drink that’s not water’; given the heat of the day and walking I’d been doing, water would certainly have been the smart choice, but I will refer you once again to the fact that I was 16 or 17, and therefore guzzled free Dr. Pepper like the vino de Vici in Spring.