My daughter Sofia was afraid of thunderstorms. Not unusual for a six-year-old. What was unusual was her solution. Most kids run to their parents' bed, pull the covers over their head, that sort of thing. Sofia would come down to the arcade. She figured out that if she sat behind the Tunnel Hero cabinet — right on the floor, cross-legged, back against the wall — the electrical hum of the machine drowned out the thunder. She said it sounded like the ocean. It didn't sound anything like the ocean, but I wasn't going to argue with a six-year-old who'd found her own way to be brave.
She'd sit back there for hours sometimes, drawing. Crayon on whatever paper she could find — napkins, receipt rolls, the backs of flyers. I'd find her drawings tucked into the coin return slot, folded up tiny. Stick figures of me and her, arcade cabinets with rainbow screens, suns with smiley faces. Once she drew the whole arcade from above, like a floor plan, with little X marks where each machine was. She was six.
The game itself was a late addition to the floor. I almost didn't buy it — a cave-flying game didn't scream "quarter eater" to me. But it had this perfect feel to it. The tunnel walls narrowing, your ship threading through gaps that got tighter and tighter. Pure reflex, pure spatial reasoning. No enemies to memorize, no patterns to exploit. Just you and the geometry of the cave. It became one of the most-played cabinets in the place. I should've trusted my gut sooner.
I kept every one of Sofia's drawings. They're in a shoebox in my closet. Sometimes when I'm cleaning I'll open it up and there they are — crayon stick figures and wobbly letters and a little girl's version of her dad's arcade.
Sofia's Drawing
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O │ .---. │
/|\ ♥ ♥ ♥ │ |~~~| │
/ \ │ |___| │
SAL │ [___] │
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ARKADE
★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
MY DAD'S ARKADE
by Sofia
age 6
"Sofia's 32 now. She's an architect. I like to think she got her sense of space from dodging cave walls at 200 pixels per second." — Sal "Pixel" Martinez
_____ | _ | | |_| | - Sal "Pixel" Martinez | _ / Galaxy Zone Arcade |_| \_\ Est. 1982