Hot Slut Of The Day!
The brown change machine!
No visit to Chuck E. Cheese or any other arcade was complete without a dramatic, stressful, butt cheek-squeezing stand-off with the brown change machine. Kids today look at the brown change machine the same way I look at broccoli that’s not covered with mayo. They look at it with “what is that and why does it exist?” eyes. (Side note: Now is not the time for you to judge my broccoli with mayo fetish.)
Long before arcades used boring plastic cards as game currency, we had to use tokens or quarters to play games. Whenever I see some brat using a boring plastic card to play a game at an arcade, I want to tell them that I feel sorry for them, because they never got to experience the magnificent joy of walking around with a pocketful of glorious tokens, and they’re never going to develop character by struggling to put a wrinkly $5 bill into a brown change machine.
Because I’m sure my mom wanted to experience true struggle, the bills she gave us to exchange at the change machine were always so busted that I don’t even think they were bills anymore. They were ripped, taped up, wrinkled, and had more creases than a love note folded by an 8th grader in the 90s. It’s like they had been jumped by a pack of hyenas with knives. If those bills had mouths, they’d sing, “Nobody knoooows the trouble I’ve seeeen.”
So when I had to change one of those bills for quarters or tokens, I walked up to that change machine while stretching my fingers and hands, because I knew I was in for a real battle. I had to use the side of the change machine to try to de-wrinkle that bill and I had to pray out loud for a miracle. Trying to make those bills straight was as impossible as trying to make me straight.
But every now and again, Jesus would wink at me by making the change machine accept one of those sad bills and give me tokens. The pause the machine took in deciding whether or not to kill my spirit by spitting the bill back to me or make my life complete by giving me tokens was the longest pause in the history of my life. And because of that I can say I’ve lived!
Pic: Pinterest