Tip of the Day: Avoid Chuck E. Cheese’s Saturday at 5 p.m.

Yesterday we planned an outing with our older son’s birth mom and her family, to celebrate the birthday of our younger son (did I mention that open adoption can be kind of complex?).

Since we are busy families with crazy work schedules, our outings are quite loosely planned. In other words, we agreed to do something on Saturday, and that something involved meeting for pizza somewhere. Since we live in the Seattle area, there are a lot of choices about where to meet for pizza.

So yesterday at 4:15 p.m., we agreed to meet at Chuck E. Cheese’s. It was early in the day; how could they possibly be busy? Jen’s girls, who are 4 and 2, were tired, and we wanted to get together at a place where the kids had the freedom to move around. Chuck sounded like the perfect solution.

At 5 p.m., we met at Chuck E. Cheese’s only to discover a line of folks waiting to get in that snaked to the door. Just like Disneyland! When we made it to the front of the line 15 minutes later, we requested a table for 8. They led us to the back of the restaurant and showed us to a booth meant for 6 (max). I looked at the hostess and said, “Um, how do you plan to fit 8 people in here?”

She (who looked to be in high school) gave me a blank stare and said, “Eight?” Then she continued, in that lazy, condescending tone that high school girls are experts at, “There isn’t any other place to sit. Maybe when things clear out we can move you to another table.”

We looked around. We had been escorted to “birthday party row.” Every seat in every single booth and rows upon rows of long tables was full of sugar-hyped, poopy-diaper-smelling, screaming-at-the-top-of-their lungs toddlers and preschoolers and their parents (and their cakes, and presents, and assorted diaper bags).

We looked at each other. Oops. We had forgotten that the preschool set parties early, in anticipation of 7 p.m. bedtimes.

We reluctantly squeezed into our booth and commenced figuring out how to order our pizza (none of us had visited Chuck in several years). Needless to say, attempting to carry on a conversation amidst the din was impossible. We stared at each other across the table for a while, shouting random comments.

My sons, who at ages 14 and 11, were practically the oldest kids there, happily escaped with their tokens to play games. That left more room in the booth! We took turns taking Jen and Isaac’s girls to play games and wander around while alternately eating pizza and getting in some small talk whenever the noise died down enough to hear one another.

As we left the restaurant, we collectively sighed in relief just outside the door, happy to be out in the cold, quiet air. We agreed that we will never, ever visit that place again at 5 p.m. on a Saturday.

Read my 9-part series on open adoption.

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