Tearing up the track

Darby's end-of-season party for softball was tonight, at the new Incredible Pizza (link is not to the OKC site, but you get the point), which is basically a steroid-injected Chuck-E-Cheese meets SpeedZone. It's housed within an old WalMart building, so it's quite huge. For eight bucks you get an all-you-can-eat buffet and five bucks on a game card to play games or play mini golf or ride go-carts, or ride bumper cars, or bowl, or I'm not sure what else because the place was so huge... Anyway, the kids had a blast, as if they couldn't in such a place.

After they ate dinner I couldn't keep them in the party room to save my life. They (ALL the kids, not just mine) burst out of the there and headed for the game/ride area faster than I could keep up. When I first reached the game room, I couldn't find either child. While I did finally find Darby clamouring to the ticket-yielding games (she's into winning those "valuable prizes" like gross fake teeth), I still couldn't find Shelby at first.



Then I saw a bunch of parents gathered by the go-cart bleachers and I asked if any of them had seen Shelby. They pointed inside the go-cart raceway, where I saw that several of the girls had gotten in line, and there was Shelby, also getting ready to race.



I should have had someone take a picture of my jaw-dropped face, because I couldn't believe it. If it weren't too late I would have gone after her, because I thought for sure she'd freak out with all those other cars out there. But to my surprise she did quite well. She didn't crash once and handled the track and car like she'd done it before many times (she seemed way more focused than what is typical for her). I was amazed, considering how often she crashes when biking or skating. One of the parents suggested she had found her niche as the next Danica Patrick. I think that would give me a heart attack before the age of 40.

We were there close to three hours, which was far too long if you ask me, and of course the girls didn't want to leave. It is a pretty neat place, though I'm not sure I'd want to have a party there, as it is just so chaotic with all those kids running around (seriously, picture a WalMart entirely filled with kids running around in all directions, in many cases with food in their hands).

In fact, the one thing I really didn't like too much about the place was that they didn't stamp kids' and parents' hands with matching invisible ink patterns like the Chuck-E-Cheese does to make sure kids don't leave with the wrong adults. As much as I hate to admit it, there were a couple times when I just flat couldn't find my children in that huge place, and they would NOT stick with me (and couldn't/wouldn't hear me when I yelled for them it was so loud in there). I get very anxious about places that aren't child-tracking-friendly. Though I will say that the place was crawling with security personnel (both rented and local police) and there were security cameras everywhere. While I would never want it real-world tested, I'm sure they're prepared (or hope they are anyway) for counter-abduction scenarios.