Denny's; Fife, Washington

Claw machines vex me.

I'm fully aware that I have a tendancy to obsess about things, and today it was claw machines. It had been ever since Mom and I had set off for a weekend trip down to Portland, Oregon for a bit of bonding, and about a week prior. I had never noticed how omnipresent the little temptresses were. Claw machines seemed to be following me and for some reason, for the first time in my life I was having this itchy need to play one, but I had yet to work up the courage to actually drop in a well-earned quarter and actually give it a go. Now I was sitting at a table in a Denny's in Fife, Washington having an intense internal wrestling match over the worth of a quarter. Furthermore, that damn stuffed turtle was staring at me; pressed up against the glass...smiling.

Mom was talking about the host of birds that she hoped to encounter on our visit and I was trying my best to listen, but I couldn't seem to tear my eyes away from those little black beads that were judging me from across the room. My fingers tapped nerviously. Or squelched, or some other onomonopia for tapping against a sticky surface. It was a Denny's after all. The waiter came, and left so quickly I almost failed to noticed that I had ordered. There were benifits to having a signiture order after all, I didn't even need to think about what I wanted. The stare-off could resume.

A pox upon stuffed turtles.

The truth is, in my memory, I don't think I'd ever actually tried a claw machine. Sure, I'd done the little mini-ones that sit in the back of every pizza parlour known to man that, for a small fee, will render any child with just enough pixie-sticks to allow them to be annoying; but the big ones, the real ones, the Mother-machines had always been off limits. Everyone knows that these claws are a scam. It would seem like something with a large metal claw would be a sure thing. Metal versus stuffing? You'd think metal would win every time, but the manufactures have perfected the engineering of "uselessness" to an art. Believe me when I say, that no matter how much skill is involved in retreiving a prize, you always only get what you pay for. No matter what magic is imbued in that glass casing to make those toys look beautiful and handcrafted, once it's out, should you ever actually get anything out of them, you're inevitably going to wind up with the one toy that looks like it's been digested by a rotweiller. Me, I've flirted with that kind of danger before. Maybe that was why I was so apprehensive. I may not have ever tried the claw machine, but I had delved into the dark world of carny-games, and I knew what was in store. Headless bears.

There was a time in my life when I was too chicken to ride carnival rides. I loved carnivals and fairs but the rides were a no-go. So I opted to waste my fair money on the games. Even to my seven-year-old eye, I was an expert in the world of high-stake gambling. I could tell you right off the bat which games were loaded, which were pointless and which ones were just plain dull. I had perfected the art of ignoring the barkers and rooting out just which games would allow me to walk away with the maximum number of squeaky hammers. Fair games are a toss up. Sometimes you'll win something fun (like the aforementioned squeaky hammer) but most times you'll walk up to a booth displaying the coolest prizes and instead they'll hand you something so sub-par that it's almost comedic; here plays in the foreshadowed bear. I had weighed the compitition and spent most of my fair money on snacks, or cheap thrills and an inflatable saxaphone that's lining (predicably) burst after only two mock-jazz-solos and I was looking to spend the last dollar on something worthwhile. Finally I picked out a single lone booth that was tucked away behind the ferris wheel. I don't remember the game, but I remember the prizes; Giant Garfeilds, colourful lollipops, light-sabers that lit up and made noises, and out of the whole display not a single bad prize could be found. The game, as I recall was not the most straight-foward, so I was hesistant to try it, but I gave it a go and won. Of course, you don't get to choose your prize, but the booth was so bountiful I didn't particularly care which noise-making, colourful toy the carnie decided to give me. I was just excited I had won. A tight-wad, even at that tender age, I knew that gambling my money away on fair prizes was a mistake, and the concept of winning a lightsaber, or a stuffed animal large enough to consume me, should it come alive in some weird, unfathomable circumstance, for a mere dollar was a deeply rewarding revelation in of itself.

He reached into the pile of prizes, sinking almost up to his shoulder as he gripped around for a moment, his tongue peaked out in concentration, until he finally found what he was looking for amid the pile of loot. I peered over in gleeful anticipation, waiting to see what wonder would be mine.

Then appeared a tiny black bear. Small, small enough to fit in the palm of my hand, and made out of the cheapest, most plasticized fur I had, or ever will set my eyes on. It was so pathetic and bedraggled that the homeless guy that plays guitar near my house, and who wears an Santa costume that's gone yellow with age, would probably feel sorry for the pathetic thing. More startling, perhaps though, was that it had, at some point in it's short existance managed to have been decapitated. No, not a hole in it's neck, or a manufacturing mistake that could be perchace explained away or gone unnoticed. It's head was gone. Stuffing poured out of it's neck like some sort of gruesome Law-and-Order: Stuffed Victims Unit corpse. The carny held him up and walked over the counter, not even having the respect to go back in, in search of the head.

I stared at the carny.

The carny stared at me.

I remember the hand off going impossibly slow, as though one of us were waiting for the other to make some note of the bear's lack of cranium. The carny watched me, silently, with a stony gaze as if daring me to make the first move. He brought the bear around, and tentatively handed it to me. I took it. We stared. I don't remember ever losing his gaze long enough to examine the bear. It's head was missing. Further scruple seemed unnecessary. He dared me to speak up about the bear, and I dared him to actually try and pass of a headless bear as if nothing were wrong.

I don't think I ever spoke to that carny. Eventually I turned around, bear in hand, and walked away. I waited for him to stop me, tell me that there had been some mistake. But no. In retrospect, there's something rather heartless about giving a seven-year-old a headless bear. I don't know what happened to the bear. I have little need of more stuffed animals, and it's likely that Mom threw it out, failing to understand the monumental implications of being awarded a headless bear. But that bear will forever live on in my heart. Never before has a child been given something so monumental and yet so utterly inane.

That stuffed turtle still stared at me as I ate my Denny's grilled cheese sandwhich. It was a poor sandwich to begin with, so the turtle did nothing to sour the meal itself. The bread was tasty, but the cheese was American; a major mistake in beginning Grilled Cheese Sandwhich costructionists. American cheese is too sweet to make a tasty sandwhich, at least in my opinion, without tempering it with a creamier filling. Especially when the chef puts a tomato in it. Sweet cheese with sweet tomato? Yuck. The balance of taste was entirely thrown off. But the fries were passable. And given the fact that it was Denny's, what more could we ask?

But Sandwichs were not forefront on my mind. Headless bears and conniving turtles paraded around my brain.

"I'll be back in a moment." I said, standing with a needless sense of gravitas. I fingered a cold set of quarters and strode towards the miniaturized plush Las Vegas that was the claw machine. The turtle watched my approach, unfazed, and unrelenting. The quarters dropped in with a satisfying ka-ching, and I took the joystick with a hand practiced by years of computerized flight simulators. Aware that I was sacrificing that crucial 10 minute window during which french fires are edible; I carefully, gently, and with agonizing slowness, lined up the claw right over that damn smug turtle.

The claw dropped.
The roar that seems naturally built into Denny's, fell silent.
The world telescoped in to those black eyes as the machine landed with the turtle pinched pefectly between those three stainless claws.

And with all the strength of a limp noodle, slid over the turtles head and deposited nothing into the prize bucket.
Curse you manufactored uselessness! I pressed my face against the glass, as the turtle stared back at me; a barely suppressed mirth dancing in his beady little eye as I resigned myself to stalking back to a plat of cold french fries.

But as I walked away I noticed, ever so slightly, the thread on his neck had begun to give way...just...slightly.

The Grilled Cheese Epidemic

    "You are so boring." My oldest brother Josh moans at me, rolling his eyes and doing everything he can to physically express his complaint. "Who comes to a restaurant like this and orders Grilled Cheese?"
     "I like grilled cheese." I mutter into my sandwich. I resist the urge to point out that my meal also arrives ten minutes before his, also that his meal appears to be, perhaps, still alive.
     "You don't have any sense of adventure." he gripes, "You don't ever try anything new. You're so boring."

That's not true I think to myself. I'm a very strange person. Very strange. Totally abnormal, and utterly not boring. But then, if that's true, why am I eating a grilled cheese sandwich? Josh over there appears to be eating Cthulhu, and I'm eating melted Cheddar on White. I'm not even eating the crusts. What the hell is wrong with me?

I'm not boring. Am I? Sometimes this is a question that haunts me, for no particular reason. Maybe it's because I was described as shy by a friend of a friend with whom I did not connect, a description that most certianly does not fit me, or perhaps it's because I constantly feel as if I've lost that energetic spark that I had as a little kid. Then again, I still play with toys, race for the swings, and flop on every bed in the furniture department of the mall. I'm twenty. Maybe it's because the above conversation with my more worldly older brother could've happened at literally any point in my life. He's got my number, it doesn't matter what resteraunt we go to, from Denny's to Athena's Paradise, I invariably order a Grilled Cheese Sandwich. Why? Am I really a boring person?

I really do worry that I'm not interesting enough. I think most people do. Maybe it's because I'm a lazy person, or maybe it's because I have poor interpersonal skills, and sometimes look at the world like Mr. Spock observing McCoy and Kirk having a snark-fest. Maybe it's because I'm that much of a nerd. It actually more likely because my interior monologue is more powerful than my external one. I narrate what I do inside my head, and I hold fascinating conversations in the forum of my brain and forget to have them in the real world all together. This is of course in comparison to my best friend who is the embodiment of the quirky character from every 90's cult film, right down to her yellow ruler suspenders and tendancy to walk in diagonals because her one leg is longer than the other. She has verbal diarrhea, but she's so loveably adorkable that nobody really cares.

I'm not boring though. I was the weird kid in high school. Though, given the school I went to, it wasn't terribly difficult. I was labeled lovably quaint because I hadn't ever been to Europe. The colourful tights and use of the word "groovy" just made me all the more quirky. But I'm not boring! I just like grilled cheese. More that that, I suppose, I'm cheap. I don't like spending my, or even worse, other peoples money, on food that I might not like. Give me a taste from your plate and I'll try anything, but when it comes to ordering for myself I'll stick with cheese and bread, thank-you-very-much. That doesn't make me boring. It makes me resonable, and slightly pensive.

I'm just me. I'm a theatrical, costume-designing, zero-to-loud, goofy, and "possess a child-like view of the world". All words used to describe me in high school. Moreover, I like grilled cheese and I have eaten it just about everywhere, in veritably every combination known to man. And I can prove it.