Dave and Bust

Young parents know that it becomes extremely difficult to have a simple date night with your spouse when the kids arrive. However, even though having children decreases your mobility, spending quality time with your spouse is essential to a healthy marriage.

So after making all the necessary arrangements, my wife and I often go to Dave and Busters for date night. The food is okay, but we really go for the games. It’s like a casino for kids or an arcade for adults. It’s a place where you spend a bunch of money in order to win some tickets you can use to buy overprice useless stuff. Where do I sign up? We decided that it would be more fun if we worked towards a goal- getting our oldest daughter a giant stuffed bear. Of course it was like a million tickets and we could probably just buy the doll for about 1/6th the cost but it’s the process of winning at the games that makes it fun.

I never thought my wife would actually enjoy playing games since she never grew up playing arcade games. She spent time calculating how much she could save in college by taking AP classes in high school. (At this point, she would probably remind me that the year of college classes that she saved at Biola amounted to about $20,000. I guess it wasn’t time wasted…) At any rate, Dave and Busters reminds me of when my sister and I would go to Chucky Cheese as kids. Buying useless stuff with all the tickets we won (or stole) was fun times. To my surprise my wife does have quite a bit of fun doing the same thing. It’s a good night out with my wife.

At Dave and Busters, you can turn in tickets you’ve won without spending them. They will load that amount of tickets on a card that you can keep for future use. After a few outings, we were able to accumulate a decent amount of tickets. As we were looking in the store to potentially cash out, my wife noticed a father with his daughter looking at some dolls. The little girl wanted a certain doll but her father kept saying, “Sorry honey but we don’t have enough. We only have 185 tickets.” My initial thought was, “Wow. You must really suck at games and why are you even in the store? You can’t buy anything with that amount.” My wife, the more thoughtful side of this relationship, quietly says to me “Honey, I think that’s sad she can’t get that doll. Maybe we should get it for her.” My jerk reply was “But we worked hard for these tickets and they are for OUR daughter.” “But we have plenty of tickets for both,” she kindly responded.

At this time, I knew I would be a complete jerk if I didn’t buy the little girl a doll, and my conscience later would only confirm it. So we approached the little girl and her dad and told them we would begrudgingly gladly buy the doll she wanted. The dad responded, “Really? Are you sure?” “No problem. I don’t mind helping out other dads who suck at games,” I replied (in my head). The dad looked at his little girl and said, “Look dear, these nice people are going to buy you the doll.” The little girl inquisitively looked up at her dad and said, “What about sister?” The dad then looked back at us with a face that said, “Yeah, what about her sister?” Before I had any time to respond my wife quickly said, “We’ll buy one for her too.”

We bought Joelle a couple of smaller dolls (a lion and a monkey). Afterwards I just gave the dad our card with the rest of the tickets on them while forcing a smile. They were grateful and we told them “Have a good night, enjoy the toys, and God bless.” On the drive home I told my wife, “A dad who sucks at games shouldn’t get off the hook.” She replied, “But you know it wasn’t about him. We made a couple of little girls happy tonight.” “I guess,” I said dejectedly. What a bust!

Once we got home we showed Joelle the dolls we got her. The joy on her face was absolutely priceless. She won’t go to bed without them and carries them all over the house. I guess a giant bear that was bigger than her really wasn’t that practical anyways. Things didn’t work out how I thought they would. But I guess it pays to not be a jerk sometimes.