Within ninety seconds, they'd located every plastic machine gun in our house and were shooting each other up in the back yard.
Within ten minutes, one child had half a cup of Elmer's glue in his hair and announced that Gus had put it there.
"Why did Gus put glue in your hair?"
"It's okay; I asked him to."
Well, in that case.
I washed the glue out of his hair. Or at least I tried. It turns out thereare some things that will stick together with Elmer's Glue. And hair is one of them.
On the way to the party, one boy asked me to put on 107.5 the River. He knew every lyric to every song, and sweetly chirped Ke$ha's latest hit from the passenger seat behind me.
What you've got boy
is hard to find
think about it all about it all the time
I'm all strung up my heart is fried
I just can't get you off my mind
because your love, your love, your love is my drug
your love, your love, your love is my drug
This is what first grade looks like now.
And then Chuck E. Cheese itself was ... INVIGORATING.
For some reason it had never occurred to me that the place would be slam packed with people on a Saturday night. Or any night, for that matter. And these weren't parents throwing birthday parties, these were people who have freedom of choice. And they were exercising their right to choose by spending a gorgeous Saturday night, on a holiday weekend, playing Skee Ball and video games, eating mediocre pizza, and trying to con my kid out of his birthday tokens.
An older boy strolled right up to Gus and said "give me your tokens." Had Larry not been standing there, Gus would probably have handed them right over. Then another of our boys set his tokens down to play a game, and those got stolen, and we were all, THIS IZ THE KLASSIEST BIRTHDAY PARTY EVER!
Can't wait to do this again! Perhaps for my birthday.
But Gus?
LOVED. IT.
He's all about the trappings and the accessories and the attention. And Chuck E. Cheese delivered these things in spades. With our attentive dedicated party host (a 50-50 cross between Tracy Morgan and Kenneth on 30 Rock), and all the singing and clapping, and the Birthday Star Musical Revue ...
And the birthday boy medallion and inflatable crown filled with tokens.

It was everything a six year old boy could want.
And so much more.