Strollerderby : hell

Who's Watching the Kids at Chuck E. Cheese?

JeanneSager — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 17:31:00 GMT

When a Texas area TV station took its cameras on an undercover operation into the Chuck E. Cheese's restaurants in the San Antonio area, they were trying to catch the "kid checkers" breaking bad. I hope they took their earplugs.

Chuck E. Cheese's is heaven for little kids. And like any good (albeit lapsed) Catholic, I firmly believe in heaven's eternal opposite. Yes, Chuck E. Cheese's is hell on Earth for parents. The rat himself is Satan, come to burn our tongues with oily cheese pizza and our ears with the searing sounds of shrieking children let loose on a play floor with a cup full of coins.

Let loose is exactly the problem. You really can't blame Chuck E. for the mass chaos that unfolds under his whiskers. But the mom who contacted WOAI says you can blame the company for advertising a kid check program that doesn't work. The premise (in case you've been one of those parents blessed by a child with a profound lack of interest in junk food and arcade games) is that no child will walk out of a Chuck E. Cheese's with an adult other than one who walked in with them. To monitor the ingress and egress, an attendant stands at the doorway to welcome families with a numbered stamp. Each member of a group walking in gets a matching number stamped on the hand in black-light-sensitive-ink. Babies get a numbered sticker to adhere to their clothing. When a child attempts to leave, the attendant is charged with running the black light first over their hand then that of the accompanying adult. If the numbers don't match, no one leaves.

At least that's the plan. In San Antonio, not one of the restaurants passed the WOAI test. Every child sent in with an adult left with a different adult. Some of the "checkers" never even checked. Others tried to find the stamps, but gave up without a fuss.

It's annoying, but ultimately, who cares? Do people really expect the teenager at the door of Chuck E. Cheese's to keep their kids in line or protect them from a pedophile? My last trip to Chuck E. Cheese's (entered and left with someone kicking and screaming both ways - any guesses on which member of the family pitched which fit?) was for a birthday party for my three-year-old's little buddy. There were five adults and three kids under three-and-a-half. We spent the entire time on our feet, running after kids. We did our very best not to let them out of our sight for a second, and we were exhausted by the end of the day.

But letting a kid out of my sight in a busy restaurant (can you call Chuck E. Cheese's a restaurant?) was out of the question. Scanners at the door or no scanners, people can still walk in the door with all sorts of ulterior motives. Short of rolling out the bubble, keeping kids safe means maintaining control of the situation . . . and the kid.

So you can call foul on Chuck E. Cheese's for poor hiring choices, poor advertising, what have you. But can you really blame them for losing your kid?

Image: Chuck E. Cheese's

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Palin: Women Who Don't Support Other Women Go to Hell

Hannah Tennant-Moore — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 23:49:00 GMT

It's not a good sign when a potential president fouls up a famous quote, particularly when she's reading it off of a piece of paper and when she picked it up from a Starbucks cup earlier that morning. At a California rally yesterday, Sarah Palin told an enthusiastic crowd, "There's a place in Hell reserved for women who don't support other women."

She was misquoting Madeline Albright, who once said, "There's a place in Hell reserved for women who don't help other women." In this case, "help" and "support" may be polar opposites.

Palin goes on to wonder how "a comment like I just made, how it will be turned into whatever it will be turned into tomorrow in the newspaper." Well, I'm going to let you, the people, turn that comment into whatever you turn that comment into after you watch this video.

Photo: mlive.com

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God Says Dads Can Suck It

Mike Adamick (Cry It Out!) — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 21:02:00 GMT

I'm usually pretty quick to get my dander up over any perceived slights or breaches of social decorum, but how does one respond to this?

John Hagee, God's right-hand man, says stay-at-home dads are going straight to hell.

"For others its laziness, you're too lazy to work and support your children. I'm talking about men. You call yourself Mr. Mom, God calls you a bum. St. Paul says you are worse than an infidel. Let me look you right in the eye and tell you that Hell is your future home if all you do is sit on your backside and let your wife support you in your life."

While it's true, I do sit around all day while managing a household and chasing after a 2-year-old -- it's especially annoying when my daughter interrupts mah shows -- but I still have to wonder: God doesn't have bigger issues than sending me to hell?

But more importantly, is this what Hagee thinks parents do? Sit on their backsides? I'd love to see the reaction if he said moms are lazy and sit on their backsides all day while their husbands support them. What would Jesus say to that, mother fucker?

Out of My Bed, Kid! Sliding Down the Slippery Slope to Co-Sleeping

Karen Murphy — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 15:31:00 GMT

I used to mock, in the privacy of my mind, those parents who were chained to their kids' beds, chained to an endless nightly routine of lying down wth the kid, lying down in silence and stillness, hardly daring to breathe, sometimes for hours until said kid finally fell asleep, sometimes not until the wee hours of the night.

"Stupid jackasses," I'd mutter (in my head). "How do parents become such suckers?"

Then, one day, I became one of Those Parents. And now I understand:

Sometimes You Do What You Have To Do.

End of story.

I have FOUR kids, by the way, and it wasn't until #4 that I became the mom whose kid demands/insists I lie down with him. Because otherwise he won't sleep. Otherwise there is crying. Or, worse, he impinges upon my parental Alone Time and comes downstairs and starts playing like he belongs there, ignoring my futile pleas/commands to go back up to his bed. I have learned my lesson with that. He's 4 years old next week, and every night we lie down together on MY bed, whereupon he promptly goes to sleep. Then I get up and sneak away like any self-respecting parent would. Then when I return a couple hours later I scoop him up and put him in his bed. Every night. Every freaking night. Without fail, without deviation. Because any deviation results in a Night of Horror, and who wants that?

So what to do?

Rachael bribes her kids with candy to get them to stay in their beds (sorry for outing you, Rach). I haven't resorted to this method yet but it's tempting. But lots of parents grapple with this. I know I'm not alone. Listen to this: "Look at your own emotional reaction. [to bed-sharing] If your emotional reaction is anger or guilt or frustration, something's wrong,"

Anger? Well, no. Guilt? Not at all. Frustration? BINGO!!

"Experts" agree that any transition away from such an arrangement takes "a few weeks". Gah. Anybody have any easier, sure-fire methods of getting my kid to sleep in HIS bed, without me? Tonight?

This Here's a Story 'bout a Kid Named Hell

Sarah, Goon Squad Sarah — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 22:58:00 GMT

What could a five year old do to get barred from Catholic school? Have a name like Max Hell. It isn't his stage name either (even though it sounds pretty cool). Max Hell is his birth name. His father is named Alex Hell. It is their family name.

In Melbourne, Australia a priest refused to enroll the little boy in St. Peter the Apostle school because of his name.

The school said Max could enroll only if he used his mother's maiden name.

Sadly, his mother's maiden name wasn't Fuck Off.

I say a guy with a name like Max Hell don't need no education. He can just form the youngest black metal band in Australia.

That would rule.

Hell on Wheels: Family Vacations Gone Wrong

Rachael Brownell (Redsy) — Wed, 06 Jun 2007 18:04:00 GMT

Family vacation misadventure stories aren't usually funny when it's you and your kids stuck at the airport short of diapers, or visiting Great Aunt Clarisse and her 1000 glass elephant collection that your toddler destroys. But honestly, there's hardly anything funnier than reading about someone else's horrid family vacation -- especially when it involves RV camping and poor dad's dreams of family togetherness.

Reporter T.J. Simers describes his family's well-planned but ill-conceived 2-week road trip in rented RV that culminated in a family reunion in Kentucky. The family couldn't figure out how to operate the thing (it was a beast with slide-outs) so weren't allowed to use either the toilet or the shower, and they all eventually succumbed to a stomach virus.

Part of the charm of a horrid family vacation story is that it makes one feel less annoyed when that trip to Disneyland or visit to the grandparents turns into the third circle of Hell, rather than the delightful interlude one hoped.

[Photo credit: Providence Journal]

Pope Decides Unbaptized Babies Aren't Stuck in Limbo After All

Rachael Brownell (Redsy) — Tue, 24 Apr 2007 16:17:00 GMT

Well now that's a relief! Unbaptized babies and other undecided sordids once stuck in limbo (aka: Purgatory, aka: Mall of America) on their way to Heaven/Hell can breathe (drool?) a collective sigh of relief. A recent papal investigation determined (via research?) that unbaptized babies will no longer be stuck in limbo. They can finally crawl on up to Heaven.

Phew!

Slate's Michelle Tsai asks the question of the year: So now what happens to all those babies who've been stuck in limbo all this time? Are they given a gold-expressway-stroller to Heaven? I mean, God's gonna get his ass kicked by a bunch of angry babies unless he grandfathers (Fathers?) them in.

And God may not be afraid of a pack of angry teethers, but sure as shit he should be.

Sleep-Robbing Babies Take Two Months' Worth Per Year

Karen Murphy — Thu, 29 Mar 2007 12:07:00 GMT

Ah, those first heady days of parenthood, one blending into another, the nights stretching long and lonely while keeping vigil with a baby who never read the part of the manual that states that nighttime is for sleeping. Remember those days? When you drive off to go out for the first time in days or maybe weeks and for a split second you wonder if you left the baby in his carrier outside? Or in the house? So you turn around in a panic, narrowly missing a lamppost in the process, but no, there's your baby, snug and safe in his seat, smack in the middle of the back seat where he belongs? (Or was that just me?)

Sleep deprivation, my friends. It seems to come with the territory of parenthood, the parent's rite of passage. And it's costing us about two month's worth of sleep during that first precious year.

So here's a new one: Competitive Sleep Syndrome. You know, where the parents argue daily about which of them had less sleep the night before? Or they brag to friends (often padding the facts) about how well their baby sleeps. So now there's a name for this! Who knew? Well, I know for a fact that I got way less sleep than my ex-spouse when the children were infants; after all, lacking breasts of usefulness to a hungry baby, he was able to roll over and go back to sleep while I sat and watched old movies with subtitles and the sound turned off. Ah, "quality time" (which often was quite blissful, by the way, but sometimes though was just plain hell).

Sound familiar? Who stayed up with the baby in your house? (Or were you blessed with a baby who slept through the night at five weeks?)(And can I say I HATE YOU!) Spill it, will you? Share your crazy sleep-deprivation stories, c'mon I know you have one!