Hey, Kids! Flick Your Bic?

So, I was just chatting with a neighbor friend of mine. We were both unloading stress about our two sons after they had a nasty sandbox skirmish this afternoon. She was stressed about her son being a bully, while I was worried about my son being the opposite. We came to the conclusion that maybe the two of them will balance each other out in the end. That is, if we can manage to keep them friends without killing one another first.

But, then she shared a bizarre story with me that I have to pass along, because it completely trumps my fork story from yesterday.

So, after the sandbox altercation, my neighbor took her two kids to a new CiCi's pizza that opened not far from our neighborhood as a reward for her daughter's good report card. She gets there, accidentally dumps a huge glass of blue sports drink all over the place, mops up the drink, spills an entire plate of pizza on a little girl who ran into her, apologizes to the girl, and finally sits down--completely drained from her day. (My sympathies were with her, because the LAST place you want to cap off one of THOSE days is in kids' pizza/video game/dining-establishment-from-hell.)

So, after eating, she eagerly let her kids go play video games so she could relax. They came back happy, each having won a prize from a machine. You know those machines where everyone gets a little cheap piece-of-crap prize, no matter how you play? The same prize that later will make the child's mother insane as she try to "categorize" and "containerize" billions of these little pieces-of-crap toys because her kid will not just throw the damn things away. But, sigh, I digress...

The prizes were in those little plastic capsule containers that you often find rubber balls and things in. The plastic sealing the little container was near impossible to open, and she was tired and ready to go home. She asked her daughter to just wait to open it at home. But, in the car, her daughter got it open and then asked her mom to tell her what it was.

My neighbor reaches back and has her daughter hand her the toy, expecting to find some cheap plastic trinket. Instead, what she found was...

A LIGHTER.

Yes, I said a lighter. The same item as you'd light your cigarette with or flick at a rock concert (in the 80s) during the lone ballad of the night, with the crowd all joining in, giving the masses a feeling of peace and hope in the world amidst the stench of pot smoke. "Sister Christian, oh the time has come..." (sorry...flashback...giggle)

So, she checks and her son had also won a lighter too. Angrily, she calls and insists on talking to the manager. When she explains what happened, the embarrassed manager said he'd "go unplug that machine right away" and rationalized that the vending machine company must have mixed up adult toy prizes with the correct kid ones that were to go in there. Oh, well that makes so much sense and makes us all feel better doesn't it? But, how many kids walked away with a lighter before someone said something? And, tell me, why were the lighters in a capsule that was decorated with kids stuff on it?

And this also begs the question, aside from a whole slew of pyromaniacs in training, has CiCis also armed our youth of tomorrow with condoms and tampons?