Let’s have a word, parents and grandparents.

It doesn’t really matter if your (maybe) four-year-old grandson is any good at Skee-Ball or Big Rig.  You hear me?  It doesn’t fucking matter at all.  Yes, I know if he’s more accurate he’ll get more tickets and be able to get more stuff from the redemption counter afterwards.  So is he, believe it or not.  And it doesn’t matter.  

He’s not going to care afterwards.  He’s not improving his motor functions when you stand behind him and browbeat him for fifteen minutes about keeping his elbow locked or his arm straight when he’s throwing a ball for Skee-Ball.  His timing isn’t going to be any better if the two of you stand behind him and shout NOW! (notably, not in unison) when you think he ought to be dropping a coin to hit a lever in Big Rig.  And if you, a grown-ass man old enough to have Seen some Shit in your life, who presumably raised some kids to adulthood already, elbow your four-year-old out of the way on this meaningless fucking game so that you can “do it right for him,” there is something seriously wrong with you.  

I mean, hell, you’ve made me hate you in less than half an hour, and I’m not the target of your constant hectoring and your bullshit over every single damn thing I do.  No wonder the kid’s “misbehaving” (by refusing to give up his last ball on his Skee-ball game as the timer slowly clicks the throw away anyway, because he doesn’t want you to do it for him); it’s not “kids these days,” as you griped to the other mysteriously old couple in my gameroom just now.  It’s that you’re both assholes and your grandson rightly doesn’t seem to like you very much, because he’s not having any fun.  

You have managed to take a kid to an arcade and make it not fun.  That’s unbelievable.  It would be an accomplishment to be proud of were it not so sad.

I mean, seriously: why the hell did you bring him here anyway?