the prize

When I was a boy, as we left the supermarket (typically one called Price Chopper) we would crane our necks, pining over the row of gumball machines and the promise of a prize for the price of a quarter. It could be a teeny tiny toy soldier wobbling around inside a clear plastic bubble, or maybe a miniature gold pistol, a charm, a whistle, something no one ever needed but there they were staring back at us. We grew up poor, and were lectured over and over that “we could have no toys with batteries” as batteries cost too much. Go read a book, preferably one from the library or build something out of wood scraps, but not on the living room floor. We did not drink soda either, rarely plucking from a box of Whitman’s chocolates - a gift given to our family during the holidays. No candy bars, no frosted flakes. Scrambled eggs and shredded wheat, chicken soup and apple pie on a good day.

In our minds, those gumball prizes grew into something sacred and exotic. If we did come up with our own money, sure we could squander it on one, and we did - staring at some warped plastic pony that was quickly pawned off to our little sister, forgotten as quickly as the toy tumbled down from the machine, after a few glorious turns.

Tbilisi is now dotted with game of chance boxes - the mechanical claw that lowers with the empty promise of a prize, all gazing back from behind the smeared glass. They glow in the middle of the night, an unblinking eye of possibility. They gather dust on street corners or on a lonely stairway, in the airport by the toilets, on the second floor of the bazaar where they sell half-rotten fruit. Theye are everywhere, and I have never seen a person use them. Well, yesterday I saw a grandfather with a grandchild, barely more than a toddler that he bounced in the air, using the tiny little shelf on one of these boxes for the baby’s feet to dance on, but they did not plunk any money in. It was more like dancing outside the concert in the parking lot without paying for a seat. Free music, found.

There is a cruel underbelly to these claw chambers, as you can pay and grab nothing but air. There are no promises with these machines as the lights blink and wild music plays - all canned Las Vegas, shipped to any corner of the world. It is hard to ignore the giant metaphor, the sword dangling above them, the ugly life lesson they are preaching - a cocktail of desire and humiliation, of callous offers, of the scam built in to every interaction.

One of these boxes stands around the corner from us. I pass our neighbor on the summer sidewalk, as we wipe the sweat from our foreheads and wave our hands in the muggy air saying hello. I raise my eyebrows, nodding towards the machine.

“No one ever wins.” She says in her broken English.