I love an arcade. In any other context I’d find the mix of dim lighting, constant bleeping, questionable music, and flashing machinery intolerable. But there’s something so nostaligic about the sound of 2p coins crashing into a metal tray mere seconds before they’re put straight back into the slot. I love watching streams of little yellow tickets pour out of games into my hand and discovering what level of tat our pile will be worth this time. No UK seaside trip would be complete without a visit.
We’re all big arcade fans here, so we go whenever we get the chance. My daughter and I enjoy the water gun game, she and Leon play air hockey, we all tackle the ‘throw balls at the guffawing clowns’ challenge together, and our son has an extra long sit in the Peppa Pig car - because it’s his holiday too.
But I draw the line at the claw machine. You know the one - where a metal crane hovers above a pile of stuffed toys and dares you to pay £1 to try and fail to pick one up. I know better than to give money to that slippery customer. Or at least I usually do.
On our last trip to Lyme Regis our daughter was determined to get me to have a go. She loves cuddly toys more than anything, so she wasn’t going to let the opportunity to take another one home pass her by.
She asked over and over while her dad and I explained that we WILL NOT WIN, so there’s no point trying. But she wasn’t giving up, so I said fine, we can have one go - just so she can see how impossible it is - and then we can all move on with our lives.
I put a coin in, shifted the claw forward a touch, right a bit, and then down onto a shark toy. It lifted it up and I waited for the inevitable slip, but it didn’t happen. Nope, the claw carried that cuddly creature over to the prize shoot and dropped it straight in, while Leon and I stood back open mouthed, and our daughter jumped up and down on the spot.
She retrieved our new small friend from the tray and asked ‘Can I have it?!’ to which the answer was obviously yes, I just needed to take a quick picture - because I saw this blog post coming.
We often talk about this little surprise win. (Partly because I don’t think Leon has ever looked so impressed by anything else I’ve achieved in the 18+ years we’ve been together, which says a lot).
It’s gone down in family history as hilarious evidence of just how wrong we can be. (It’s also made it much more difficult to win arguments about which games we should and shouldn’t spend money on. My plan really backfired there.) And it also taught us a useful lesson about parents, children, and optimism.
We didn’t even entertain the idea that we might win a prize. Our daughter wouldn’t let herself believe that we wouldn’t.
Now, of course, we’re longer in the tooth, so we know from experience that these machines don’t normally work in our favour. We also always try to protect the children from disappointment (and, let’s be honest, we also try to protect ourselves from the fallout of an unwanted result).
But there has to be space for hope too. Hers never ceased and it paid off. And if we hadn’t won, she still would have coped, even if she hadn’t immersed herself in our vision of failure.
I want to get the balance right between equipping our children to cope when things don't go their way, and encouraging them to remain beautifully optimistic people. Good outcomes are always possible. I don't want to get them into the habit of imagining the worst like I so often do. If anything, I want to train my brain to be more like theirs.
The best thing I can do as their mum is assure them that I'll always be there when the proverbial claw drops the proverbial shark, and that I'll never think they were silly for believing they could win.
Because what do I know anyway?
She is the queen of manifestation without even realising it! Her optimism is incredible but on top of that is her willingness to try, fail, and try and practice until she succeeds. In this instance, if you hadn't won it the first time, you definitely would have ended up with a really expensive mini shark 😂