Balls and Walnuts
more than you ever wanted to know
No Country for Little Kids
He’s not a little kid anymore. Good God, his voice is changing! But “No Country for Blooming Adolescents” didn’t have quite the same ring . . .
Las Vegas is not a kid-friendly town. Used to be, the only casino you could take a child and not get dirty looks (or worse) from omnipresent security guards was Circus Circus. Even at the Circus, if you happened to be standing in place for longer than a minute (say, for example, while waiting for a family member to get out of the bathroom), a guard would come over and escort you to the front lobby. Loitering ist verboten!
Even now, it’s easy to run out of things to do. We went to Red Rock Canyon on Tuesday; it’s a fine place to climb without gear since the grades are gentle and you really have to work overtime to get yourself into trouble. Nevertheless, Jake usually manages to find one precipice or another to climb out on, whereupon HIS life flashes before my eyes.
Yesterday we went to a place called Gamestop, and oy, what a hassle, since we had to park at the MGM and walk a fair distance to get there. And all totally unnecessary, since when I googled Gamestop just now, there are locations all over Vegas (including one just a few miles away from my parents’ house). The one we went to had the rattiest pool tables I have ever seen, and way too many out-of-order games. Still, we had a decent time shooting pool, playing air hockey, and killing zombies. Noisy place, but at least they don’t allow smoking.
He wants to go to Circus Circus today. Yes, it’s another arcade, but they do have circus acts, and the arcade games are different than the ones at Gamestop. As for me, I’ll be happy if I can make it to a bookstore. (I finished Earth Abides yesterday . . . and even if it doesn’t pack the punch of The Road, it still closes with a haunting quality. There’s a bit at the end where the protagonist, who has grown quite old, speculates that most of the people who died in the Great Disaster (a plague) would have been dead by now anyway, and the young people alive now have known no other world than this, and seemed contented with their lot. So was it such a Great Disaster after all?)
There’s a Go Kart track somewhere nearby, but we did that not long ago and Jake hated it. They used to have a water park in Vegas, but it’s the wrong time of year for that, too. I suppose we could catch a movie.
For Thanksgiving, we’re either going to a casino buffet (with all the trimmins!) or PF Chang’s. I’m hoping for PF Chang’s. Sort of like the ending to A Christmas Story, don’t you think? But we all need to celebrate the holiday in our own peculiar way.
Some more peculiar than others.
D.
I find Vegas a surreal place all round. We went to the buffet at some casino… Excalibur I think, and it was like this massive food-funnel, where you just shuffled through massive twisting lines past acres of pasta salad and jello and violent orange pumpkin cheesecake.
What is it about Nevada that makes it attractive to retirees? The heat? Low cost of living? Just don’t get it…
Dean: you know how the tremendous array of facts that comprise biology only makes sense when viewed with evolution in mind? (Or perhaps you haven’t thought about it. Trust me on this one.) Well, Vegas only makes sense when viewed with this hypothesis in mind: everything here is intended to stun with sensory overload, and so to part money from, the Average American. What makes it surreal to you and me is that we are in the wrong demographic.
Kira, there was a time when homes here were cheap and high quality. And besides, my dad likes to play poker.
Why in the name of WHOEVER anyone worships would someone want to take kids to Las Vegas. They don’t like it there particularly, there’s not much for them and no one else wants them there either, for the most part.
With so many other wonderful kid friendly places in the US, please, rethink that whole idea.
It’s one that doesn’t work for ANYONE!
really!
sheeeeeeesh
This, truly, is one of the things I love about the internet: the way a total stranger will think it’s cool, somehow, to drop in and be judgmental.
Sorol, if you had bothered to check either the post above or the post below this one, you might have figured out that we were in Vegas to visit my parents. Which, you know, is something people tend to do around the holidays.
Also, I disagree. Red Rock Canyon is one of the most kid-friendly rock climbing areas I’ve seen. There’s also Hoover Dam nearby, and the Grand Canyon is a half-day trip away. We had to spend time with my parents, though, so our range was limited.
Not me. I’m not visiting your parents, holiday or not. I don’t get along with my own parents, so I’m certainly not about to…
Wait. What?