So our main little man Cameron celebrated the big 4.0 a couple weekends ago and it all went down at the big Cheese. I probably haven’t ventured to that land of creepy animatronics, greasy pizza, and screaming little people for twenty years – and while the ambiance is the same as ever, something else has sure changed since then.
I fondly remember rows of warm, buzzing arcade games – Pacman, Galaga, Donkey Kong, Frogger, and so on – each robbing me of handfuls of filthy game tokens. But now, in this post- Playstation era, arcade games barely exist, and Chuck E is full of a whole different breed of token munchers. Sure there’s still the every familiar skee ball; but now it’s joined by a bunch of other miniature midway games. The ones that intrigue me most are the ones that actually involve your token as a game piece. Drop in your token and watch it fly, roll, slide, or bounce into oblivion. Rarely do you get such a graphic display of throwing your money away.
That made me wonder if vending machines would fair better if their coin chutes were clear acrylic ramps which launched your change into buckets of different point values. Alter the speed in which you feed in the money and you change the trajectory. Paying with dollar bills would automatically give change, in the form of special vending tokens of course, so everyone can get in the game. Add an alpha-numeric keypad and a small display for high scores and watch sales sore!
But back to the birthday party. I got to thinking about how later this year I will be turning 9 Camerons – eight more of his lifetimes – and how much can actually happen (and will happen for Cam) over those years. All the things you learn, people you get to know, places you see. Not to say the kid hasn’t made great use of his first four years. After all, he’s learned to speak a new language and all sorts of new physical feats. And while Cam was busy doing all that, what have you been up to in your last Cameron of life?
