As part of my boarding school responsibilities, I serve as "advisor" to a group of students. Yes, I help them choose classes, but my role as advisor goes well beyond pure academic advising. I'm the first point of contact for their parents with the school, and for these eight students when they have questions about anything at all in the complex ecosystem in which we live. We eat together once a week as a group, giving us a chance to share stories, to get to know one another.
And, in my group, I arrange a birthday celebration for each student. Usually these past couple of pandemic years, that's meant simply me getting take-out from a restaurant of the birthday boy's choice, plus cake and a chorus of "happy birthday." Sorta predictable, but a meaningful diversion in a busy, demanding schedule.
Well, we're clear to take the students out to restaurants again. Yay! When it was Alexander's turn to choose the birthday event, he did ask to go out. To Chuck E. Cheese.
Sounds like fun, I said. I remember going to several birthday parties at Chuck E. Cheese when I was younger. It was a rather commonplace event - my wife says she used to go to "Showtime Pizza", which seems like the same sort of thing. But Alexander - and five of the seven students who ended up on the trip - did not grow up in America. A Chuck E. Cheese party was an exploration of American culture, similar to attending a baseball game, a Broadway musical, or a rural county fair.
I made the party reservation, on which I had to indicate the age of the birthday boy or girl. The form did in fact allow me to input Alexander's new age: 19.
Most of these boys didn't know what to expect. All got on the bus for the hour-long drive on a Sunday morning with a mix of excitement and skepticism. Would this be fun, or stupid? Or both? Time is the currency of our school. They were committing something like four hours of their precious free time to this event. Will this be worth it?!?
Our wonderful host Reyna greeted me and the group, and quickly upsold us on more food. (I knew ahead of time that two small slices of a medium pie each would not cut the mustard for these 16-19 year old boys. Make 'em extra larges, let Alexander choose the toppings, and make it four or five slices each. Plentiful food is a boarding school social lubricant, as would be alcohol for an adult gathering.) She gave everyone wristbands for the games, and sent the students on their way to play.
After plentiful skee-ball, pop-a-shot, and other arcade games, the pizza arrived. Two students seemed to have disappeared, but they emerged from the Mario Kart cave eventually. (If they had been 7, I would have worried at their absence! I figured these rather bigger boys would show up for food.)
My wife Shari and I were a bit disappointed that the restaurant no longer features an animatronic rat band. That was the big feature of 1980s Chuck E. Cheese birthdays - the serenade by the creepy clicking plastic figures. Instead we got just a video screen welcome. But...
Apparently someone told the salad bar operator to go put on the rat costume, because OUT CAME CHUCK E. CHEESE HIMSELF!!! The video board played a birthday song, and Reyna encouraged all of us to do a birthday dance with Chuck. In the event, only one of my group - Taeho, the man from Gangnam, Seoul - danced. Alongside every 7 year old in the restaurant and the poor soul in the rat costume. The rest of my advisees looked on... but they were smiling. They were, indeed, entertained. I have pictures. Not that I'm going to show you, because I want my advisees to be employable in the future. But I have pictures. Everyone, Alexander included, enjoyed the party. It was worth the time and effort.
Why am I writing about Chuck E. Cheese on a physics teaching blog?!? Because of the conversation I had with Reyna while the 16-19 year old "boys" cashed in their arcade tickets.
"Thank you for working with us," I told her. "I expect you're not used to teenagers." I didn't expect her response - Reyna was effusive about the experience.
"I was nervous at first," she said. "I saw that Alexander was 19. We do get people who come with bad intentions - 23 year olds who just want to make fun, or insult, or be stupid. But I could tell when I first talked to your group that they were excited.
"You, and they, came with good intentions. I can tell they had a great time. And I was glad to be a part of that."
That's the lesson. Teenagers are in fact a despised underclass outside the confines of a school - and, if you listen to too many teachers kvetching in the faculty lounge, often even within schools. Reyna pushed through her prejudice, even though her prejudice was born of authentic experience. She kept an open mind, and treated my teenaged, ethnically-diverse advisees with respect, with the assumption of good faith. And we were all the better for it. (Especially the restaurant's bottom line. Rat pizza ain't cheap.)
Thanks, Reyna.
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