The Ball Pit

An excerpt from Tyler Kern's autobiography

Tyler came to the prison workshop already having written most of his autobiographical book. Everyone enjoyed hearing Tyler’s humorous and insightful stories during the three or four months he joined us each week before his release. Now that Tyler is out we are starting to work on the editing process towards finishing his book.

………..

The Ball Pit

My ninth birthday was coming up quickly, and since it was my last year in single digits, my parents said I could do anything I wanted to celebrate. I decided, predictably, to have a party at Chuck E. Cheese. They had carnival games, a video arcade, talking animatronics, pizza—if you could call what they served pizza—and there was also the ball pit.

Oh, the ball pit. They don't really have ball pits anymore, so let me enlighten you with a sonorization from memories past. Imagine an indoor swimming pool, but instead of water it’s filled with thousands of plastic spheres, roughly the size of baseballs. The pits ranged in depths depending on location, but the one at my local Chuck E. Cheese was around six feet deep. I wasn’t six feet tall as a kid, so when I jumped in, I’d sink to the bottom as I imagined being buried alive in quicksand—then quickly scramble my way back up to the top before suffering an agonizing death.

At the party all of us kids piled into the ball pit together. We pulled each other under, pelted each other with balls, played Marco Pollo and Squash the Bug, ahh the ball pit. Such fun, right?

Then why are they all gone now?

I’ll tell you why. The pits were filled with filth. I mean absolutely fucking disgusting. But science being what it was at the time, and ball pits being a relatively new invention, like many other things in the 90's, people were ignorant of the dangers. The balls were never cleaned. Such a task would prove impossible. No one had the time to sterilize 1,000 plastic balls every time a child threw up in the pit.

Kids from the 90’s were particularly gross—they would shit and pee in their pants and blow snot bubbles while cannon balling into the pit. Small animals would crawl in and die. People would spill their food and drinks in there too.

Smaller kids would sink to the bottom of the pits without the strength or will to save themselves. After panicking down there for a few moments they would begin contemplating certain death. At least there were enough petrified food scraps at the bottom to last a few days until rescue came. Otherwise, they would eventually have to turn cannibalistic—pulling other kids to the bottom and eating them to survive.

The abandoned kid would have to come to terms with the idea that the ball pit was now their home. No doubt their parents would call off the search party after realizing the rescue was hopeless. They’d have to make peace with the situation, start to dig and hollow out little chambers to sleep in and create tunnels in order to traverse towards the food.

At least that’s what went on in the mind of a panicking child during the mere thirty seconds or so they were actually trapped at the bottom of the pit. Our vivid childhood imaginations can easily turn against us.

What eventually led the authorities to the ball pits were two things. There were a few reported instances where a homeless person sought refuge from the elements in the bottom of one of the pits, and were later found either unconscious or dead. But that was no big deal, right? If they were just passed out, all it would take to fix the situation was for a group of kids to jump in and startle the homeless person awake. They would then slowly emerge from the pit and saunter away shamefully. It was probably more terrifying for the parents than the children if you think about it.

But the final straw that ultimately proved to be the ball pits’ demise, was when a study came out listing all of the transmittable diseases that were found within the pits after a scientist did a random study. Turned out contracting Hepatitis wasn’t worth a few moments of fun.

So, we say farewell to the ball pits. It seemed like we hardly knew you, but we certainly loved you while you lasted—and I’ll never forget that birthday party!