No Kids, Mommy’s HELPING You. . .

You know how people are always comparing things to crack? “These doughnuts are like crack.” “Watching Glee is like crack.” “This black tar heroin from Colombia is like crack.” Well, add one more to the list. This story is from Rachel Joy, an American living in the Philippines with her husband and three young children. She blogs about all that craziness and more at Cool Bean Mommas.

Every Sunday we would have our family outings, or better known to our children as “Funday Sunday.” It usually consists of going to church, eating at a restaurant, followed by a fun, kid-friendly activity or amusement, then topped off with some kind of ice cream or sweet treat at the end. Today we brought the kids to Tom’s World after church. It’s a place full of games, rides, and arcades. Pretty much has everything and anything that can keep a child entertained and occupied for a good hour.

While we were perusing the area, my husband discovered this one game that enables you to win more tokens. It’s called the Coin Pusher. Basically you just continually drop coins in to eventually make more coins fall. Simple. We thought,”Hey, here’s a game we can play to help win more tokens for the kids, for their games. . . ” So we bought about $5 worth of tokens and gave half to the kids and the other half for us to use on the Coin Pusher.

Not long after the first dropped token, my husband and I were hooked! After the first big win, we were like “Yeah! Let’s keep going!” So the initial $5 spent turned into $10, then $15, then $20. At this point of the day, I think my husband and I were enjoying more than our children. During our obsession, my kids kept coming up to us asking for more tokens and I would merely reply, “Mommy needs these to win more tokens for you guys. . . then I’ll be able to give you a lot!”

Needless to say, I never gave my children the bountiful amount of tokens I promised them, but rather used the majority for my own selfish enjoyment. Out of the dozens and dozens of tokens we won, I think I hesitantly parted with 10 to my children.

So two hours and almost $30 later, we reluctantly peeled away from our beloved Coin Pusher. After that, I developed a new compassion for people with gambling problems. At the end of the day, ice cream made up for the fact that Mommy and Daddy were deranged coin pushing addicts who wouldn’t share their tokens!

Next time we’ll just watch a movie. . .