A coworker was telling the story some time ago of how he used to work at
Chuck E. Cheese, the miniature family fun center fronted by a
pizza-loving anthropomorphic mouse. It was one of the first jobs he ever
worked, and among his responsibilities was having to dress up in the
Chuck E. Cheese costume to greet and pose for pictures with patrons.
Great fun for the kids, of course, but the job could be brutal on the
employees. For the germaphobic, it's disgusting enough having to
maintain all the coin-operated arcade games after they have been pawed
at with the unwashed hands of children coming directly from eating pizza
on the restaurant side of the establishment. But there was apparently
nothing more nightmarish than being the guy in the mouse suit and being
abused by unruly children. I can well believe it, because, once upon a
time, some twenty years ago, I was one of those kids making it a nightmare.
Chuck E.'s was initially kind of a scary place to me. In my memory, it
was a dimly lit and uninviting hole, filled with strangers—mostly kids
and teens, yes, but also oddly with some gruff-looking biker types there
for the video arcade games. The entertainment
was pretty awful, too; the
animatronic stage show was just creepy. Even today, I still find these
singing robot puppets to be disturbingly inhuman simulacrums of life
that only leave me yearning for something real.
The “live” Chuck E. was a different matter, however. It wasn't that I
cared much for Chuck E. himself, and I understood very well that it was
just a man in a costume, but at least that meant he could walk and
behave like an actual human, which made him not scary, unlike the
animatronic version.
Almost as soon as he appeared and began waving to the guests, he was
mobbed by kids who, for some reason unfathomable to me, were overflowing
with affection for this character that seemed to me nothing more than a
second-rate cartoon mouse. As he was high-fiving and hugging as many
kids as he could while making the rounds, my mother urged me
to get in there as well and lay hands on him before he disappeared, as
though just touching him (or, rather, his gnarly costume) were supposed
to produce some magical result. It was hard to grab his attention in that swarm of children, however, so my mother suggested I grab his tail instead. I gripped that
tail and pulled with all my seven-year-old might. And in the next
split-second, I witnessed something real yet simultaneously
unbelievable.
It was one of those moments where time seemed to slow, when my senses
seemed to operate a thousand times faster than my reflexes, so that I
could glimpse every inevitable microsecond across a seeming eternity,
yet I could not move at all to affect it, my own body frozen helplessly
along with everything else before me. Chuck E., taken by surprise by
being pulled from behind, reflexively stretched out his arms in front of
him, as if to balance himself. But it was no use. The pull was
irresistible. One foot followed the other backward too quickly. Arms now
flailing frantically, he was tripping over himself, stumbling, his behind outstripping his feet, the rest left to gravity, a dull thud as he crashed to the floor.
Poor Chuck E., after struggling to
get back to his feet, spun around quickly to see who had been behind
him, but I had already retreated back a ways, and there were
tons of other laughing children in the same direction. There was no way
for him to know who had made such a fool of him.
I know I should have felt sorry for him, but I couldn't. I still can't
force myself to feel bad about the memory now. It was as though it were
the funniest thing I had ever witnessed, so overcome was I with
laughter.
Twenty years later, I finally went back to Chuck E. Cheese. It was not the same location that I went to as a kid. I don't know if
that place is even still around, but I know that it was in a part of
town that I don't travel anymore. This facility was much brighter and
probably cleaner than the one in my childhood. But, either because of
that or maybe just because I'm not a child anymore, it was missing some
of that mysterious quality that made Chuck E. Cheese both scary and
exciting for me as a kid. This just seemed like a pretty sparse
restaurant with a very small selection of arcade games. This location as
a whole was smaller, I think, than the one in my memory, or at least it
seemed that way.
It was actually pretty dreary and depressing. Granted, it was the middle
of the week and at night, but there weren't a lot of kids there. It
just didn't seem like a very happy or lively place. The pizza was way
overpriced and mediocre, and the animatronics show was as creepy as
ever, yet now made additionally obnoxious by the weird pop songs that
the puppets sang. Most of the amusements were just random games of
chance, little different from slot machines, yet they were not only
legal but targeted toward children. The selection of coin-operated rides
was especially meager. (Yes, I realize there's no way I could enjoy the
kiddie rides now, nor did I want to, but it was disappointing all the
same to see this part of my childhood disappearing.)
But the most disappointing aspect was Chuck E. himself. Examining the
artwork for the character, one of my companions noted how much "cooler" the modern Chuck E. was, dressed now in his cargo shorts that were quite
a departure from the rodent she grew up with. Later that night, the
live Chuck E. made his much anticipated arrival, but indeed this was no
longer the mouse I remembered. He was decked out in the skater outfit,
yes, but, more importantly, he no longer had a tail! Thinking back, both
to my coworker's accounts and to the incident from my own childhood, I
could understand why maybe they had finally removed the tail from the
costume—after all, even a seven-year-old child could have a grown man at
his mercy if he got hold of that glaring weak spot—but, even so, there
was something lost there, something to be lamented. Alas, you really
can't go home again.
1 comment:
There's actually something unspeakably sad about this story, and not just because of the baffling display of childhood cruelty, or the fact that the place sounds even more uncomfortable than the Boll Weevil, or the fact that, as a grown man without children, you inexplicably "went back" to Chuck E. Cheese, or that . . . wait, where I was going with this?
A casual glance at Wikipedia shows that Chuck E. Cheese was actually started by Nolan Bushnell, yes, the very same man who founded Atari. Maybe not surprising, considering the video game component of the restaurants. And the animatronic show probably was inspired by his admiration for Disneyland.
They have over 500 restaurants in almost every state, and a couple of Arab countries as well. I have to believe that Bushnell had nothing but the best intentions in mind for the children who would come to his establishments. And if there is something clearly depressing about those places now, I can't say I felt that way as a kid, any more than I found the Family Fun Center depressing (though try going to Boomers now - shivers).
For what it's worth, one of the members of the stage show was named Helen Henny. Coincidence?
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