Pinball Witches

It was a spontaneous day six months in the making. If you’re in the Midwest, you might have noticed that someone recently reneged on their promise to never again flood the earth. Indianapolis has been inundated, with roads and some neighborhoods submerged. Out in our suburb, we’re wet but above water. If the universe wants to kill me, it’ll have to use something stronger than rain. A giant meteor should do the trick. We had some damaging winds early in the string of storms. One gale knocked out power at all the schools right before dismissal time. There could be no greater tragedy than being kept late after the final bell. When the kids got home, they found the glass top to the small table on our porch had been tossed into the neighbor’s yard, where it shattered. The wind also tore a piece of flashing from the peak of our house thirty feet above the ground. I’ll need to hire someone with scaffolding to put it back. Still, I’ve gotten off easy compared to many of my fellow Hoosiers. My list of remedies so far is just “hire a contractor” and not “build an ark.” I’ll keep a dove and a raven handy just in case.

The rain has done minimal damage to our house, but it’s done major damage to our plans. The children have had numerous events canceled by the deluge. Saturday, Betsy was supposed to have a cross country practice at a distant park followed by a picnic and parent’s meeting. Thanks to record rainfall, that was changed to an indoor meal in one of the community rooms at the school. We were done by 12:30 p.m.. Some natural disasters are a huge time saver. Mae also finished up her marching band obligations by noon. We unexpectedly had a free afternoon. It also happened to be the third Saturday of the month, the day that a pinball arcade I’d read about but never visited offered unlimited plays for five dollars per person. I’ll never succeed at making all of my children happy, but I try to keep track of the things they hate the least. They played pinball at an amusement park a few years ago and seemed to enjoy it. I’ve had my eye out for an opportunity to get them a big session of it ever since. It took two years of waiting and a thousand-year storm, but we finally had the chance this weekend. If you want a day when everyone is free, you have to think on the scale of millennia.

That blank space in the schedule was too precious to waste on just one activity. I hastily stacked three. My wife’s birthday is coming up. As a married man, that’s basically a national holiday, or would be if I were a better husband. Most years, we don’t make too big of a deal out of it. The kids and I usually bury her in piles of candy. Unlike me, she’s not a bottomless pit. She still hasn’t finished her chocolate from the last two years. She asked that we not give her any more. I pivoted to the only thing better than chocolate: Legos. There was a secondhand store for them a few miles from the arcade. I told Lola we’d go there and she could pick out any set she wanted. If you’re a single man, feel free to steal that move. It will make any woman fall in love. We also had a birthday dinner to schedule. Lola chose the Cheesecake Factory, which doesn’t exactly have abundant locations in this city. There was one a mere eight-minute drive from the secondhand Lego store. With only a few hours of notice, I had a chance to pull off a perfect day of dadding and husbanding. I couldn’t wait to see how I would mess it up.

We started with pinball. The arcade was in a hip, up-and-coming neighborhood with all the pros and cons that come with it. It had cool old buildings and less cool old streets not built to accommodate modern traffic and parking. I would have been just fine if I were trying to park a horse. I was diverted first by construction and next by a parish festival-turned-block-party. I parked on a narrow side street several blocks away and started to walk. I immediately encountered a scammer asking for gas money. He saw a dad with four daughters and thought I’d have empathy. He couldn’t have been further off the mark about this mark. A few minutes of walking later, we arrived at an old factory turned into a quirky business hub and art space. We made our way through a maze of random walls and art exhibits until we found a dank corner full of pinball machines. We had arrived.

We paid our thirty dollars and claimed machines. Nearly all the games were up and running, a rarity for any arcade. These devices were well loved. The place wasn’t so much a business as a clubhouse for enthusiasts that opened up to the public a few times a month to recoup some of their costs. I prefer video games, which have more ways to fail. I want my slow reflexes punished by an explosion or a violent crash rather than just a ball falling in a hole. Lola, on the other hand, grew up with pinball. Her dad bought an old machine and put it in the unfinished basement of her childhood home. She and her sisters put on roller skates and took turns, with two girls circling the basement while the other one went for a high score. The world was very different before YouTube. Most of our girls seem to take after her. We entertained ourselves jumping from machine to machine, exploring the different mechanics and themes. I’ll never understand why pinball manufacturers try to have a narrative story beyond “hit the ball.” It’s just a big flashing lights machine. Based on the art, the two biggest fans of pinball are scantily clad women and Satan. Lola’s set growing up hadn’t been quite so risqué. The theme of that one had been billiards. It was a sedentary game simulating a different sedentary game. Those were the kind of mild thrills she was used to. No wonder she settled for marrying me.

The kids were really into pinball—for about an hour. Then they got bored. Lucy was the first to give up. She doesn’t like cramped spaces or loud noises. The arcade was her nightmare. The odors didn’t help. She said the place smelled. She was partially right. The room was fine, but the people stank. Apparently half of them had been hot-boxing at home before walking over to the arcade. Only I would be naïve enough to be surprised by stoners playing pinball in the hipster art building. I’m not here to judge anyone for their substance of choice. I just wish they would take showering more seriously. As the afternoon went on, the place filled up, and the rest of the girls became restless. I’ve written again and again about how my girls are like mini adults, but they still have the attention span of children. If I trap them in a confined space without screens for long enough, their real ages emerge with a vengeance. By the two-hour mark, it was clear that we needed to leave. Mae was the last holdout. She stuck around until she had a turn on the Simpsons machine, which was a fine piece of nostalgia to end on. It was second in that old-timey feeling only to the X-Files one, which I had to explain to the kids was based on a TV show from my childhood. I might as well have been telling them about a story written in Sanskrit.

Our next stop was the secondhand Lego store. As soon as the girls saw those colorful bricks, their energy was restored. They wanted everything but knew we were only shopping for Lola. They made mental notes for future birthdays and Christmases. Many hypothetical gift budgets were maxed out that day. Lola, meanwhile, examined every set in the store to find the perfect intersection of whimsy and value. She settled on a micro city set that had been out of production for fourteen years and was cheaper than anywhere online. It will be a fine addition to the shelves in our room. I, meanwhile, focused on unrealized wealth. They had two copies of my childhood pirate ship, each of which was listed for $950. I have all the pieces, but mixed together with a hundred other sets in two large bins. The price is only going up. I don’t know how many hours it would take me to piece it all back together, but if I could pull it off, I might be able to pay for college.

With the birthday set in hand, we headed to the Cheesecake Factory. We got there too early for dinner. That was by design. I had tried earlier to get a reservation for a table of six. Under that system, they would have been able to seat our large group sometime next March. Our only hope was to go as walk-ins. We figured we’d show up well before dinner and let the massive wait work in our favor. When we got there, we were told it would be a 75 to 90-minute wait. That was perfect. I left my name and number and went to wander the mall. The place was packed. It was then that I realized my family and I had accidentally been transported back in time to the 1990s. We had spent the day at an arcade, a specialized toy store, and an indoor mall, which was apparently the place to be on a Saturday night. It was the first busy mall I’d seen since I was a kid. Maybe the one they blew up on Stranger Things functioned as free advertising. We busied ourselves at Barnes and Noble and then a Hello Kitty store, which I didn’t know existed until that afternoon. For that last part, I let the girls go in while relaxed in a chair in the atrium like I was ninety. All the shopping in the world can’t compare with the simple joy of a good sit.

A mere sixty minutes after we checked in, I got a text that the Cheesecake Factory had room for us. When we got to the restaurant a few minutes later, they had accidentally given away our table to another guy with the same first name and last initial. There are doppelgangers everywhere. A few minutes later, they seated us for real. Most of us ordered various forms of spaghetti, none of which came with ketchup. You can’t have everything, not even for an early birthday. We ended the meal by ordering four pieces of cheese cake and passing them around the table until we had shared all the flavors and germs. If we’re all cut down by a mysterious illness this week, you’ll know why. Assuming we don’t actually get sick, it was a great weekend that gave us the spontaneous opportunity to carry out long held plans. The best part was that it left us with nothing to do on Sunday. That was what the kids were looking forward to the most.

Anyway, that’s all I’ve got for now. Catch you next time.

James