The Forty Days

I wake up early this morning, excited about the fact that I will be throwing my unemployed butt out of a plane today.  It is a little cloudy outside, but weather.com assures me that it will shortly clear up and be perfectly sunny.  At around 12 pm, it is still cloudy, so I call Skydive San Marcos, and they inform me that they have put a hold on jumping until it clears up.  They tell me that the forecast is for clear skies within the next hour.  Weather.com also assures me that it will be clear and sunny soon in both Austin and San Marcos.  At 1:45 pm, I call Skydive San Marcos again.  It is still not clear in Austin or San Marcos, but yet again both weather.com and Skydive San Marcos inform me that the forecast is for clear skies by our jump time of 3 p.m.

I call my friend Beth, with whom I am supposed to be jumping.  Based on the favorable weather forecast, and the fact that I have no back-up activity for today, we drive 45 minutes to San Marcos.  The sky is full of clouds.  It doesn’t look like they are going anywhere anytime soon.  Beth contacts a news-reporter friend of hers in San Antonio and asks him to consult their meteorologist.  When the meteorologist gets back to him, the forecast is that it should be currently clear.  Hey, everyone, go outside and look up!  It’s not clear!  When we arrive at Skydive San Marcos, we are unsurprised when we learn we will not be jumping today.

Seriously, weather.com?  I base my whole day around your forecast, and you can’t predict the weather one measly hour in advance?  That gives me so much faith in your extended ten-day forecast.  You suck.  I remember when Hurricane Ike hit Houston, and you predicted rain all weekend.  You were all like, “Hey, it’s raining.  Right now.  Go look out your window.”  No, it’s not.  “Wait.  Wait for it.  Now it’s raining, right?”  No.  It was sunny all weekend.  I went to Barton Springs.  Idiots.

To add insult to injury, on our way back to Austin, a car with a handicapped tag tailgates me.

With no Plan B, we go straight to Plan C.  “C” as in Chuck E. Cheese.  Beth lives eerily close to a Chuck E. Cheese, which I noticed on my way to pick her up, and I have not been to one since I was a little, little boy.  I have such fond memories of going to Chuck E. Cheese–running around, playing games, diving into the ball pit, peeing in my pants.  It was heaven for a friendless kid from Dallas.  I confirm in advance that they still have the animatronic band, which I remember enjoying and being slightly freaked out by as a child.  My friend Josh kindly agrees to meet us there.

As we pull into the parking lot, the first thing I notice is that the place is absolutely packed.  We have to make two trips around the parking lot before we find a space.  When we enter the building, there are little children-type people running all over the place.  After we order pizza, the animatronic band jumps to life, and I rush to the front to see them play.  Oh, how I’ve missed you, Jasper Jowls, Helen Henny, huge purple monster guy, and weird stereotypical Italian guy playing drums.  But something is wrong.  The jerky, scary movements are the same, but there is no music playing and no one’s mouths are moving.  And absolutely no one is paying attention to the band–not the adults, not the kids, just one 31 year-old man-child.  I ask an employee why there is no music and no singing.  She responds that the animatronics are “like really old, and they don’t make the parts for them anymore.”  You’re just going to let them die?  You monsters!!!

As the three of us are eating the mediocre pizza (actually, the pizza is better than I think it will be, only because I assume it will be absolutely disgusting), I notice something else wrong.  Where the heck is the ball pit?  I remember spending countless hours of my childhood diving into the ball bit, sinking into the balls, wondering if I was going to die a colorful, ball-filled death by drowning in the pit.  Beth tells me that they removed the ball pits from the restaurants because they were sanitary hazards–particles of semen and feces were allegedly found in them.  An employee confirms that the ball pit was removed because of sanitary concerns.  Gross!  I used to stick those balls against my mouth!

We then get way too many tokens for three adults, play ski ball, the basketball shooting game, and various other games.  In some multi-person game, Beth yells at a kid to stop playing while she concentrates.  I search for the Whack-A-Mole, but that too is gone because, according to an employee, it broke every week.  That too?!  Why is everything I used to love about Chuck E. Cheese gone, dying, or feces-laden?

We collect way too many tickets and decide to use them to purchase as much candy as possible–Pop Rocks, Airheads, Laffy Taffy, and Tootsie Pops.  I try and get a quick sugar rush so I can forget this day, fall into a deep, sugar-induced coma, and dream of accurate weather forecasts, singing animatronic bands, and sterilized ball pits.

I actually had fun today.  Too bad the post isn’t as exciting as if I had actually thrown my ass out of a plane.  Doesn’t matter.  No one reads on the weekends anyway.