There’s a horrendous place near our home called My Three Sons. Kids almost universally love it. Parent hate it. It’s basically a con game disguised as an arcade. Here’s the premise: Parents buy lots of tokens which kids use to play fairly harmless arcade/video games, like Whack-a-Mole. The better they do in each game, the more tickets they win at the end of it. With those tickets, kids can buy prizes at the end of the day. Here’s where it gets annoying. You have to buy about $20 worth of tokens for the kids to earn enough tickets to buy a toy worth maybe 50 cents. Not only that, but the toys are those annoying made-in-China plastic jobs that inevitably break in the car on the way home, initiating a melt-down. You can probably see why parents avoid this place like the plague. But that’s not really the point of my story.
QB is one of those odd kids who’s able to delay gratification. The last few trips to My Three Sons, he’s opted not to collect a prize, but rather to save his tickets. He’s working toward a car and track set he has his eye on, which requires something outrageous like 750 tickets.
The other day he went to a birthday party there, fired up that he might hit the 750 ticket threshold and come home with his prized car and track set. He didn’t. But he didn’t seem too upset about it.
That night, he told me he had a present for me. He had the biggest smile on his face as he held out his hand. In his palm was a toy ring with a little green stone, the kind you might get out of a gumball machine.
“Where did you get this?” I asked.
“My Three Sons,” he answered proudly.
It nearly broke my heart. He'd traded in his precious tickets to give something to me. I know how badly he wants that car, and his sacrifice makes the innocent gesture even more tender. It meant more to me than if he and his dad had gone to Tiffany's and charged something on the Amex. It might just be the sweetest present I’ve ever received. I’ll treasure it forever.
Tomorrow I’ll tell you about a similar gift Mopsy gave me.
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