Arcade

I had a summer job working in an arcade when I was 16 years old.

I was a mini-demigod in my own world. I was proud of my white-collared shirt and black pant uniform. I had a walkie talkie clipped to my suspenders and had an omnipotent arcade key that opened the front door latch to ANY arcade game. A wooden name badge, reading “TARUN” in big bold letters was pinned to my shirt.

By August, the magic was gone. I was assigned to the kiddie race track, an open space with little magnetic cars designed to look like frogs, cats and puppies. They wore frozen death masks as if they had come face to face with Satan himself. 

“This thing is broken!” a child yelled at me as his vehicle crawled across the floor. 

“It’s not broken. It’s just slow!” 

A portly mother tugged at my arm. 

“The akee-ball machine isn’t spitting out any tickets!” 

The skee-ball machines were the bane of my existence. I saw a family spend what seemed like their entire life savings to win an armful of yellow tickets. They exchanged them for a ten-dollar radio from the prize counter, a purchasable item available at any electronics store, retailing for a fraction of what they just burned. I jammed open the ticket dispenser for the fifth time that morning and dug out the clog of paper with my fingernails.

Our mascot, a six-foot dragon with googly eyes, sauntered past me, indicating a nearby pizza party. If I was hot, it was a furnace inside his walking hellhole. Kids clamored around his soft, bloated body, pulling his stubby arms and stomping his furry tail.

I paced my area like a robotic sentinel. The lights and noises coalesced into an immersive interdimensional portal. I can only relate my mind’s emptiness to meditation without the mantras or incense candles. Another teenager, wearing an identical outfit as if they were cloning us in the basement, tapped my shoulder.

“You’re on lunch. Anything I should know?”

“The cat car battery is dead, and I’m pretty sure that lady over there is drunk. See you in thirty.”