Childish Adults

Right now, Drudge has a headline up of Escalating Violence Among Adults At Chuck-E-Cheese.

The hyperlinked article used to have a youtube video of a fracas from one of the chain's Central Pennsylvania's restaurants, er arcades. The video was *pulled* by the owner. More likely there were lawyers involved sending threatening messages. And since the clip was gone I had to improvise with the pic above!

Anyway, reports of violence at Chuck-E-Cheese would hardly shock anyone who's ever been to one - particularly in non-suburban locations. I had a near *adult* violence episode last night that just about could be filed under this heading.

I had my kids at the Coastland Center Mall (yep, in balmy Naples!) real late (8:45pm) and they were running around like lunatics with the kids of a bunch of other malpracticing parents in the *Soft Play Area*. It's a *no shoes* and *no one over 42 inches* zone. Sure enough, some gigantic, clumsy pubescent made his way into the play area and started jumping, running, and climbing everywhere. My daughter is a full 24 lbs. - and that's when she's eaten, constipated, and has a stone in her pocket. It's one thing for her to crash into an age-mate, but it would be quite another to take a blow from some 100+ pound oaf. So I told the kid he wasn't supposed to be in there. "I'm just playing," he responded. I told him again and pointed to the sign; he sighed and walked out.

Sure enough some mother aunt grandmother caretaker came running in asking him in Spanish what *that hombre* said to him. She tells him to get back in there and play. He said it's okay, he doesn't want to. She starts screaming at him to get back in there. I stood up and told her that the kid was too big, wasn't supposed to be playing there, and if he knocked over one of my kids there was going to be a problem.

The woman walked away calling me a mierda. I considered calling her a *fat cheap ho* in Spanish but held back. This reminded me a little bit of an incident I had at Ana's Taqueria in Brookline, MA. There an undocumented burrito filler called me a cabrón whereupon I made a huge scene screaming back him. The Northeast isn't like California. The illegals up there are here to work, generally have little attitude, and are scared-to-death of whitey.

Attention ESL buttheads - The words you most want to use on us are precisely the ones we all can translate!

So after the potty-mouthed caretaker left, she went running over to her posse visibly complaining about me, the rules-enforcer. I thought, "Oh great", now I am going to have to deal with some tank-topped hombre and his machismo. That's all I want to do at 9pm at the mall after a long day with the kids.

Fortunately, for any would-be hombre, the posse was todas chicas. They walked by me muttering more indiscernible invective and that was the end of it.

So what set this incident off? It was apparently someone telling her kid what to do. I must have offended her *good parent* ego!

Okay, one search is all it took to find another clip of adult violence at Chuck-E-Cheese.