It seems I work (day job, though it entails many nights) on the exact dividing line between the two poles of childhood excitement. You see, equidistant from my place of employment stand Chuck E. Cheese on one side and the bureau of motor vehicles/highway patrol testing station on the other. On my daily break I sit on a bench between the two and watch the traffic. Going one way are kids, tiny, barely walking (yet running with all their tottering glee) and barely verbal (the thrilled chants these kids emit would be indecipherable without the knowledge of their destination--duckee deeesssseeee, ucky ease, etc.). You would think Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, Grandma, and endless apple-juice-filled sippy cups were all gathered there. Rarely have I ever witnessed such determination as I see from these tykes running ahead of their adults, heedless to all calls of slow down, wait up, stop. For sheer, innocent, unbridled excitement, it's a sight to behold. The fact that by my unscientific observations over the last few months fully 33% of kids under the age of six leave Chuck E. Cheese screaming, hollering, bawling only signals to me the dawning of consciousness of the dichotomy between innocence and experience that takes place for some of these kids--alas, the world, while certainly full of Chuck E. Cheese-like wonders, is also large enough to contain the drudgery of many not-wonders. William Blake would have a field day sitting where I sit.
And on the other side...backs turned from Chuck E. Cheese, facing the wide open unknown-ness of the unclosed part of the shopping plaza, usually sitting, are the polar opposites of the Chuck E. kids--teenagers sitting in idling cars, having just completed their driving tests, waiting in the limbo between the highway patrol person's exit from the car and their (the teens') parents' arrival at the car from inside the testing station. By this time the particular teen's fate has been determined, though usually, uncommunicative teens as they are, it's hard to tell whether they've passed or failed. You have to wait that half minute as the patrol person goes in to fetch the parent; sometimes, it seems, the patrol person keeps the news from the parent, allowing the teen to deliver the thumbs up/down. But when it's good, it's usually really good: The parent, if he or she is unaware of the final result, emerges from the storefront and walks tentatively toward the car until the kid eventually shows his or her cards--a relaxed, confident, of-course-no-problem smile, a heaving, thank-God-I-did-it grin, or the utter joy (usually by girls, curiously) of fists pounding the steering wheel, whooping cries, and washed over glee. It's hard to tell how far the apple has fallen from the tree, though; sometimes the parents are way more or less excited than the teen, but other times their exuberance is a perfect match for their offspring's. Then the parent gets in the car, the newly minted driver pulls around to park, the pair gets out of the car and heads back to the BMV to get that shiny license. The license, after all, that is as much about proving one's exit from childhood and the Chuck E. Cheese-initiated wonder as it is about proving one's road worthiness. The dances and beaming smiles the teens sport upon their departure from the BMV with their licenses still warm in their hands are sadly beatific--genuinely happy and proud, but just maybe, as some little tyke heedlessly hurries by them grunting "icky zees," conscious of the fact that with the licensed keys to the car, responsibility now trumps reckless indulgence in some of life's wonders.
Of course, not all the teens pass the test. I speak not only from recent observation, but from painful experience. You see, years ago, before there were Chuck E. Cheeses, to my knowledge, I failed my first driver's test (the "maneuverability test" had just been instituted, and I took the test in a '74 Chevy wagon that was big enough, I believe, to warrant the President's wife [stalwart Pat Nixon, at the time, in her shabby coat] cracking a champagne bottle on its hull as it rolled off the assembly line). I know the no glee, thumbs down, frustrated despair of a failed test (you try driving a '74 Chevy wagon through tightly arrayed cones and sticks and not catching one of those polls on a sideview mirror). Some kids leave Chuck E. Cheese howling, some teens leave the BMV silently trying to pry some chrome molding off the side of the car as they're driven away by a licensed adult.
I passed the second test a week later and have never stepped inside a Chuck E. Cheese.
Anyway, as I was thinking of all this last night, I came across this wonderful clip of David Bowie and the late great Mick Ronson having fun singing "Starman" back when that Chevy wagon was still on the drawing board. Their evident joy in singing "Let all the children boogie" instantly seemed the perfect soundtrack for those dizzy tots heading for Chuck E. Cheese amid the tad-more restrained but just as happy teens earning license to drive into adulthood.
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