A Charming Mental Picture

...from our night of joy at Chuck E. Cheese's. I refer you to Woody's Inner Dad if you need boning up on the strength of will that is "I wanna do it myself!"

So here's the setup:

In the center of Ol' Chuck's is a giant hamster tunnel. Kids squeeze into a tiny rectangular chute and wriggle their way up to the ceiling where they can then hide from their parents pretty much eternally, because they know we're not squeezing ourselves in there, and we can't reach up there and drag them out. The only ways out are the way they came and the Scary Dark Slide of Mystery and Terror.

So Josh goes running in there, wriggles his way up to the top... and panics. It's all jiggly up there with all the kids scrambling around, the slide is terrifying, the other way down requires putting feet down on a surface just far enough out of immediate reach to require too much faith for a panicked 4YO, and he's in The Hub, where all kid traffic must pass, and they're passing fast and furious. So I'm hearing him screaming in there, of COURSE at the top where I can't see him easily and can't reach in and pull him out. And I know, having checked the website earlier today for coupons, that they claim their equipment can handle the "young at heart" as well as the actual young. So in squeezes Mommy. In a skirt, of course. I had to do something. This, however, is not the picture referred to.

No, it's when I get to the top, and there's Joshua who finds the slide too scary to go down, and the steps from the entrance too distant for his feet. He's even too panicked to get himself over the plastic lip between tunnel segments. So I reach over to help him down, and get blasted up the face by the "I wanna do it!" from Hades.

He demands to do it himself, and yet is too terrified to pull it off. [Sigh]

Every time I touched him, he screamed this at me, as well as just plain screaming. All this, of course, mixed in with the hysterical crying. While Mommy sits eight feet above the ground in her modest-yet-not-built-for-climbing skirt. I finally discovered that each scream lasted only a second or two, so I could get him all the way down with a minimum of defiant shrieks. But it was not pleasant.

It will come as no surprise to other Chuck E veterans that we considered this a good trip, all things considered. By the time we turned in tickets and everybody got their little pack of Smartees, there was no crying, and all was generally peaceful and happy.

Joshua's ready to help train Joseph so we don't have too long before our next trip to Chuck E's. I can't decide whether to rejoice or hide.