How Many Tickets is That?

Need to Control

So I recently had a life-coach session with national best-selling author Jennifer Pastiloff who wrote the book On Being Human. I was explaining to her my recent discovery of just how intense my ‘need to control,’ is and how I struggle to not focus on the ‘end game.’

I relayed how even from a young age I never wanted to play the arcade games that didn’t ‘reward’ you for your efforts in the form of tickets you could exchange for prizes. Not much has changed as you can see from my ridiculous jumping video above. I can finish the sentence that cuts off at the end; “I only got X amount of tickets.”

This super-charged need for validation isn’t surprising considering I identify as a female in a capitalist society and was raised Catholic. The need to please and be validated by others is strong.

Jennifer tasked me with writing a short piece that explored this subject using action as opposed to exposition – show don’t tell technique.

Here’s what I came up with:

Play to Win

The machine makes that sound – the one it does when you’ve just won a ton of credits- and my heart leaps. How many did I earn? According to the screen, 120. Oh yeah! 

I try to do the Math, adding the 120 to what is already on my “cash out card,” but I’m bad at Math. I liked it better the old way – when the machines actually spit out the physical tickets, but in an attempt to keep up with the technological times, those have been replaced with this – a single sad rectangle dressed in a corporate logo. No more seeing the tickets puddle on the floor as envious children look on. No more strutting around with a sweaty hand and a see-through plastic bag showcasing hard earned loot.

I compulsively visit the machine that calculates your total credits in the middle of the flashing, beeping, barely lit lonely room. I stick the card in, get an updated reading, and pull the card back out. There is something I miss about the old way of counting tickets, sliding them through my hands one by one. The ritual of folding them into one another accordion style.

Where is everybody?

Probably not here trying to win tickets worth less than the effort to claim them. 

But I’m a girl on a mission. Actually, I’m a woman. A 41 year old single woman standing in the middle of an empty arcade trying to win a prize that nobody really wants. 

Back to The Coin Nudger. I like that game. The possibility that hangs on that edge in the company of all that metal. Will this be the time they all fall and the machine mouth feeds my card, and then my ego, with the top pay out: 500 credits?

Better luck next time.

But a consolation prize of 10 credits for trying so that is something I suppose.

After a few more rounds of ski-ball, and a go at a knock-off version of Plinko I head to the counter to finally cash in or cash out (what is the correct terminology here I wonder?).

I’ve accumulated 722 credits. 

I wait. 

Patiently at first. 

And then not so patiently.

Where is the prize counter worker?

“Hello,” I yell, tentatively at first. 

And then, not so tentatively.

Does this person know I need to cash in my credits? What are they doing back there? It’s not like they are busy with another customer as I am the only one here. 

I ding the service bell. Rapidly and continuously. I am getting annoyed now, and eager to claim my prize. 

Finally, a bleary eyed teen emerges from a door behind the counter. 

“Yeah?”

“Here,”  I say proudly, and push my card toward him. 

He tugs at his unruly brown curls and squints, half chuckling to himself. 

He is obviously high which for some reason really frustrates me in this critical moment of trade-in. 

He tosses me a flimsy paddle with a string connected to a ball and starts to return to the serious business of getting stoned.

“Ummm that paddle board is 120 credits; I have 722.”

“Lady, what do you want?”

Let me think. I like that big unicorn. 

“So if I want the unicorn and the paddle board  how many credits does that leave me? I’m interested in the jelly band bracelets too.”

“Here. Just take them all,” he says in a voice that stings of disinterest, while climbing the step stool to retrieve my top shelf prize. 

I don’t think his Math his correct, but before I have the chance to do the adding and subtracting he has retreated back to the rank smelling back room and his tightly rolled joints. 

I stand there and I think. And I count. 

And I count and I think. 

“He’s wrong. The paddle board is 120, and the unicorn is 615 and the jellies are 5 each. And he tossed me 4 so 20 plus 120 pulse 615 is more than 722.”

I ring the bell again to return my unearned prizes. 

Nothing. 

“I didn’t win all of these,” I say straining my neck in an attempt to get my words to reach him. 

Nothing. 

Well now I’m in quite a conundrum. Without trespassing behind the counter I won’t be unable to “legitimately” reward my efforts. 

I stand immovable for a few minutes longer. 

The beeping…and the buzzing…and the lights…

All strategically placed validation stations. 

I place all the prizes on the glass display case full of colorful promises, and I turn to go. 

I make it halfway to the door when I turn back. 

I quickly glance around, even though I know the room is barren, and quickly canter back to the prizes. I hungrily grab the paddle-board. I know I at least earned this one. 

Part of being a creative is breaking up with this conditioned idea that value lies in a monetary measurable outcome (or in this case the earning of stuffed animals and jelly band bracelets). Being able to find joy in the process as opposed to the product. To know there is worth in the work even if it never finds its way into a commercial space, onto a gallery wall, or sitting atop a publisher’s desk. I am unsure who said this, perhaps one of my heroes Elizabeth Gilbert, but I remember reading somewhere a sentiment that went something like this – you know what a person who wrote a book has that a person who didn’t write a book doesn’t have (substitute the creative endeavor of your choice here)? A book!

There is something about just seeing out a ‘vision’ that feels so fucking good. To craft into existence a combination of words or colors or textiles that didn’t exist before you committed to the process.

Can you create something today solely for yourself? Something you have no intent on sharing, and thus no expectation on how ‘it’ will be received out in the world?

A lot of us are so out of practice in what it means to simply ‘play’ that when encouraged to try it, we seem suddenly paralyzed by the prospect. We anxiously wait, unsure how to proceed in the absence of rule-books (social norms, company culture, set schedules), referees (i.e. arcade workers, parents, bosses, lovers), and rewards (diplomas, promotions, square footage in a suburb)

What it is we are supposed to do and how do we do it and why would we want to we now wonder?

Hmmmm….I wonder.