One of my early trips to the Arcade, I was 5 years old. There was this Arcade right next to the apartments where I was living at the time (we had just moved across country). The apartments were on a 4 way stoplight corner (minor intersection). I told my mother that I was going to play the with local kids (apartment runts), but instead we all huffed it across the street to the Circle K (convenience store) and asked people for spare change. This one jerk put a *bunch* of change in an open but nearly full beer can. He laughed and said we could have the change, if we could get it out of the can. We did, but we smelt like cheap beer afterwards.
We then huffed it over to the arcade across the street. I remember specifically playing Pac Man, but my memory gets hazy from there. I *do* remember we didn't get caught though.
Another time, when I was 13, I found a $100 dollar bill on the floor while going through the local mart check out line. This was a lot of money for me then. After going outside the store (and screaming/dancing), we quickly decided to spend the money on this new Arcade called Wonder Land. Every game took nickels instead of quarters - even the newest games. My friend and I needed a way to break this large bill, so we decided the best way to do this was to buy a cheap NES game. We bought Kings Knight for $25 from PlayWorld. After 10 miles, 3 buses, 2.5 hours, and a lot of jitters we had arrived at this magical arcade at the edge of town. We spent the *whole* day there. This was on a Sunday. After all the excitement and a long day, I realized we had no money to get home with and to top it off it was close to 8pm and none of our parents knew where we had gone. Needless to say, my father waaaaaas *pissed* when I called him (collect). I was grounded for a while, but I'll never regret that day.
