When I was in grade school my parents were always at work until late at night. They really couldn’t afford a babysitter, so I always had to find a place to hang our after school. My favorite place to go was Chuck E. Cheese. Every kid I knew including myself loved the fun filled place because of the huge play place, the challenging arcade games, and the tasty food court.

In my opinion, the best part of Chucky E. Cheese was the gigantic play place. I would love to crawl through the tunnels and slide down the curly slides. The best part about the play set was the huge games of hide-and-seek-tag. I would always be the one who would organize the game. I would persuade kids, both big and small, to come and play a game of hide-and-seek-tag. One of the bigger kids would usually volunteer to be “it” and the game would begin. My strategy was to sprint to one of the tunnels and climb to the highest slide. I would wait in the mouth of the slide the plastic slide until I saw the person who was “it.” In that instant, I would throw myself down the slide and escape from the person who was “it.” If there wasn’t a game going on at the time, I would dive into the ball pit and start splashing the balls everywhere.

Once I was board of the play place I would head to the straight to the arcade. One of my favorite games was called Smash the Hippo. Basically, a hippo’s head would pop out of the water, and you would have to smash it back in using a cushioned hammer. The more I could push back into the water in the allotted time, the more prize tickets the machine would spit out. Another great thing about the arcade was the basket ball game. You would have to shoot balls into a moving hoop. It was actually quite challenging, but that’s what I liked about it. I could usually find someone to challenge, and I can’t remember ever loosing. I probably lost a few games, but would claim that my opponent cheated. I would always save up my prize tickets for months so I could get the best prize, the big disco ball. It probably took me half of a year to get the disco ball, and once I got the disco ball, it was my most prized position. I would always go home and just watch the spinning colors go around the walls.

At the very end of the day I would go to the food court to get what I thought was a good meal. Now I realize that I would only eat greasy food and sugar. I would order the cheese pizza, which was my one of favorite food at the time. I think the made it taste so good with all of the cheese on it. All though the pizza was great, my favorite part of the meal was the pop. They would allow you to have free refills, so I would end up getting around five cups of pop each meal. Once I drank seven cups, and I almost threw up, so my parents had to put a limit on how much I could have. They set it at four cups, so I had to start cutting down on the pop. The last part of my meal was the sugary cake. I was always stuffed with pizza and pop, but I usually found room for at least two pieces of cake.

Chuck E. Cheese was my favorite place to go as a kid. I was a place for me to play, it had an arcade, and it had great food. I had my best childhood memories there and I will probably take my children there if it’s still around.