The Ugly (part 3)

(from 6/17) Saturday night. I don’t even know if there is any way to describe it. We came home after our escapades on the coast to joyful children yelling “Games! Games!”. We were going to the arcade. With 16 young children and not enough adults. Maybe we should’ve stayed out just a little longer… for two hours Sara and I pushed strollers running around the largest arcade I have ever seen trying to keep tabs on all of our children. Each of them was given R3 (that’s 3 Rand… and R7 = $1 approximately) to make last as long as possible in the hundreds of games that N1-City housed. Can someone say overstimulation? As it turns out, kids night out also means adult night off. The youth volunteers were as excited as the children to explore the loud, dark, crazy place of glowing games. The two of us seemed to be the only ones concerned if our kids were snatched up by random strangers, broke games, fought with each other or others, ticked off security guards, wet their pants, etc. The two owners of the centre seemed to be enjoying a conversation in the food court outside of the arcade, with no concern visible as we madly tried to control chaos. Upon reaching our breaking point we decided enough was enough. The money had long run out (almost 2 hours ago) and we decided to round up the gang. Easier said than done. We finally got 95% of them at tables in the food court while one of us would try to find the others. Kids decided it was a game to try to run back into the arcade without us noticing. Ha, funny game kids. We thought the two head adults would get the idea and come help, but they seemed to not notice. Finally one of the youth volunteers brought sandwhiches from home to feed the kids, which was good as it was past 8 o’clock at this point. We tried to find the baby and Libby, who has mental and physical disabilities and cannot feed himself, all the while trying to keep 13 other kids in one location. Finally the night came to a close at 8:30 when the two adults came over with no emotion showing and announced our departure. We drove home in silence and couldn’t put the experience into words for awhile...besides clearly knowing that the next time “arcade” is mentioned we’re both pleading sick.