A Lucky Lad With a Touch of Generosity

Ian strategizes; Daniel exploits opportunities.  Last Tuesday, we were at Buster and Dave's, a very casino-like video arcade, complete with dark overhead, soft carpet and neon-ish flashing machines - kind of Chuck E. Cheese meets Caesar's Palace, of all the savory combinations.  Daniel played the roulette machine for tickets which can be redeemed at the arcade store, and somehow stumbled on a glitch where the machine spat out approximately 6,000 tickets - apparently many more than it is supposed to release.  Of course, we now have a few lovely pictures of Joe Cool himself, in his fully green Boston Celtics sweatshirt, grinning with satisfaction as he sits in front of, and surrounded by, a mountain of tickets still emerging from the roulette machine.  It turned out that the roulette machine was never supposed to release such a high number of tickets - apparently this was  a glitch, something Daniel is good at finding in his video games as well - but the Dave and Buster's people "honored" the glitch, much as we might expect Caesar's Palace to do if someone somehow got extra-super-lucky on one of their machines as well.

But what was really touching was how Daniel spent his tickets:  rather than splurging on toys for himself, he got two electric-powered model cars - the blue one for himself and the red one for Ian, so they could race them.  Equally touching:  Ian wanted Daniel to keep both cars for himself, so that he would feel more free to race the second card against one of his friends when they come to the house.

(February 24, 2016)