Happy

Dream Day 1986

Age: Twelve

           

            My friend Leah’s talent for drawing began at a young age. The girl won prize after prize by entering countless art contests. I remember her winning a bike and a five foot stuffed bear for starters. But the prize I will never forget was the free day at Circus Circus, a Minnesota equivalent to Chuck E. Cheese’s.

            Leah showed up at my door, beaming with excitement. “I won the Circus Circus grand prize and I want to share it with you,” She said proudly. My ears perked up. Grand prize? I didn’t care what it was, I was in.

Prior to that moment I had only won a door prize for any of the contests I had ever entered. My biggest prize to date was a wallet, and I was eleven! What would I do with a wallet? Of course, I still remember winning it, so I must have been a little proud.

            Leah went on to explain her prize. She won a free day at Circus Circus and could bring along three friends to share the experience.

“Free day?” I questioned. “What is a free day?”

Well, a “free day” would start when the arcade opened and end when the arcade closed. We would be given all of the soda, pizza and tokens we wanted and were allowed to play all day long.

            “This can’t be true.” I said. “All the tokens we want, all we can eat and all we can drink?”

            “Yep,” she said. “And I have asked Ann and Dig to go as well.”

            Unbelievable! What an amazing prize! Circus Circus had video games, mini golf, skee ball and the crane game. We always had the best time there and that was with a token limit. Now we could spend all of the tokens we wanted all day long…Holy crap! Leah hit the jackpot!

            Our parents were all informed about Leah’s lucky prize, so they gathered together and decided on a day. They worked out a schedule so we would be chaperoned at all times. We were, after all, elementary school kids and needed the supervision. We actually didn’t care if our parents stayed all day long, we just wanted to play as many games as physically possible.

            I could not wait. My stomach had butterflies in it the entire week before. This was going to be so much fun!

            When the day finally arrived, we knocked at the arcade door at 8:00am sharp. The plan was to stay until midnight. Our parents agreed to the time frame, believing it impossible for us to last the entire sixteen hours.

            An older guy, most likely the manager, welcomed us and sat us down to explain the prize. We would get a cup full of tokens and could spend them on any machine in the entire place. Tokens could also be used for mini golf and the photo booth. And, the tickets earned from skee ball could be put toward stuffed animal prizes, big or small. Then he pointed to the door where we would go to fill up when we ran out of tokens.

            This was going to be great!!

            The pizza and soda were free all day, we just had to ask for it. The more he talked the more excited we became. He ended with “only the four of you are to receive the tokens, pizza and soda. You cannot share this prize with anyone else.” His face turned from pleasant to “the mom look.” No cheating.

When the manager stopped talking, he handed over our first cup of tokens and said, “Enjoy!” With a huge smile on each of our faces, we ran to the first video games we could find. It seemed like a dream. We could play every game in this arcade, for free!!

            Leah and Ann decided to hit up the crane game, but I really wanted to play skee ball. Dig followed me and we started bowling. The machine spit out ticket after ticket. I could not believe it. Every ball we threw seemed to be a winner. Soon, we organized our string of tickets and headed to the prize counter. In the past, the prize counter was filled with toys I would never win, but today the possibilities seemed endless.

            Dig and I took an inventory on each and every prize that interested us. Our list described the toy we wanted and the number of tickets needed to purchase said toy. As you would expect, the bigger the prize, the more tickets needed. We decided to go for the big prizes first and use our left over tickets on the smaller items. After all, we had all day.