Brilliant … But Bouncy

A Thousand Tickets Are About to Come Out of That Machine.

Shane went to Dave & Buster’s with my parents, who apparently can handle the blinding lights, deafening noise and overall chaos of the place better than I can.

They wandered amidst the clamor for awhile, when Shane noticed something odd.

“We saw this guy who was doing something with the machines,” he said. “He was wearing all black, and a black hat, And every time he walked away from a machine, all these tickets came out.”

Shane didn’t know what to make of the situation. Tickets are the entire goal of an arcade. The more tickets you collect, the better the prizes you can “buy” at the end of your arcade experience. And this guy, for whatever reason, kept leaving tickets behind.

“So then the guy walked right up to me,” Shane said. “He said, ‘A thousand tickets are about to come out of that machine, and you can have them.’ But I didn’t know what he was doing. Like maybe he was cheating on the machines, and I don’t think it’s fair to take tickets if someone is cheating. So when they came out, I didn’t take them. And later, we noticed that someone else probably took them, because they were gone.”

A thousand tickets! That’s enough for some incredible prizes.

But Shane passed on the tickets because … he wanted to do the right thing.

Then karma intervened. Shane was playing a game where you “spin” something and then stop the spinning by slamming your hand down on a button. When the spinning stops, the electronic wheel registers a number – and that’s the number of tickets you get. Sometimes the number is two.

Shane hit the MONSTER JACKPOT. He ended up with something like 3,000 tickets – way more than he would have had if he’d simply taken the tickets from the guy in the black hat.

And he knew that he deserved them, that he earned them, that even in a game of chance, the odds had been in his favor.

So he reveled in his tickets for awhile, and then bought a ton of stuff at the prize store. He felt happy and fulfilled and proud. But no one was prouder than me, even though I wasn’t there.

My boy chose to do the right thing.