One of the more noticeable aspects of a kindergarten birthday at Chuck E. Cheese. As I mentioned, there is a definite WalMart vibe to the place. Lots of missing teeth, lots of supersized Moms in men’s v-neck tees and sweat pants. to be fair, not every one of them is a slob, I saw some pajama jeans and algeria shoes out there.

But the rudeness. I mean, you kind of expect it from little kids running around. They’re so overstimulated and they just want to hear the bells ring and see the tickets roll out. But the parents…I don’t know , am I wrong to expect civility? I mean, I saw adults pushing little kids around to make room at games for their own children or even themselves. I saw adults pull tickets from machines when little kids ran away too quickly – and they didn’t even think about giving them to the kid, just added them to their own sweaty pile. And worst of all, I saw more than one adult take tokens when a little kid accidentally left them behind. And let me be very clear, these are incidents when the adult saw the kid walk away, and they pounced. It’s not like they innocently came upon a cup of tokens with no owner in sight.

Actually, I only saw the cup thing once. The other thing I saw was an adult who watched a kid drop a few tokens on the ground and stepped on a couple of them so the kid didn’t see them. He waited until the kid retrieved his other tokens and walked away, and then this wonderful man moved his foot and collected his booty. Seriously. Stealing from a 5 year old. How’s that for class?

I should also mention that these were not the parents of my son’s classmates. There were four birthday parties going on at once, and a whole hell of a lot of freelancers to boot. Even when all four parties were eating pizza and cake at their tables, the games were still jamming with non-party attending players. It was mad, simply mad.