Fight!

That’s a quick throwback to my youth where I spent many hours in an arcade watching boys play video games. Most noteworthy was street fighter 2 watching Ryu and Ken and whoever that green dude was that rolled himself into a speeding ball and smashed himself into his opponent. Yes.. I was there by choice, and I was getting paid!

Yup.. I got paid minimum wage to man the Aladdin’s Castle in the mall while the owners were away. I did it all. I unstuck tokens, exchanged skeeball tickets for prizes at the redemption desk, and make change for folks who didn’t want to put a 20 into the token machine. My boss was a woman and she was an asshole, but she was never there when I was there so it was all good.

It was a good job for a teenager, except maybe the sound effects that will forever linger in my brain as a result. I’ve always been a hard working dependable person so they liked me. The end of that job was kinda fuzzy but I think there was an incident where I was closing and had a migraine (which was new for me at that age so I didn’t know what it was or what to do). I ended up not doing all the chores for the daily close. Stupid stuff like cleaning the skee-ball lanes and I don’t remember what else.

My boss gave me a hard time about it and I told her I had a headache. I think she must if thought I was lying or she didn’t care. She made a big deal over it anyway. I’m fairly certain I didn’t work there much after that. My tolerance was low for being treated that way.

The arcade thing followed me when I ran away to Vegas. I was 19 and not old enough to deal blackjack and was not cut out for the cocktail-girl gig. I landed at Treasure Island at the ticket redemption desk. So glamorous!

That desk was a stones throw from the most annoying midway game in the history of the universe. Picture 10 clown heads 🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡, with balloons attached to tubes coming out of the top of them 🎈🎈🎈🎈🎈🎈🎈🎈🎈🎈, and every four or five minutes a group of people raced to shoot water into their mouths which inflated the balloons. Then POP POP POP and a winner was declared and given some shitty prize no doubt from the oriental trading company. Then repeat.. all day long. My gawd.

Going home with the sound of balloons popping echoing in my ear was immeasurably worse than any street fighter noise could ever be. Still, I worked that job until we were sick of the Vegas life (and the Military life which is how we ended up there in the first place, Brian, Mr. Airman First Class and i).

Where was I again? Oh yeah.. Round Two. This is my second post today due to missing yesterday and being awake at 3AM and needing to get my current set list of time commitments out of my brain.

At least it worked. I was able to fall back asleep after that for about two more hours. I’m finally back at the gym this morning and despite all the deadlines looming .. I don’t care. I need this.

Here’s reality.. there’s no way I’m going to bank 25 hours in the next three days for work. There’s no way I’m going to finish the Easthope book. Or Kinzie. Epic fail. I just can’t do either or both really well and that’s a fact. I’m looking forward to the end of the semester, a relief to the pressure.

It sorta feels like a bunch of clown heads racing to the finish and about to pop. “Ain’t nobody got time for that.”

But you know what I always say which remains true no matter what??.. Time marches on and whatever happens happens. One way or another things will work out, for better or worse. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.

Ok.. I didn’t say any of that. Someone else did. But if the shoe fits…

Time to Do The Thirsty Thursday Again,

~Miss SugarCookie