The latest edition of the Carnival of Gamers is hosted at Man Bytes Blog and includes illustrations! over a dozen entries! and a prize for the most popular entry!

I’m partial myself to Acid for Blood’s essay about some punk ass DDR kiddies, “Bunch of Savages in This Town”. Nothing I hate more than gangsta posers with pants puddled around their knees. No wait … I hate hockey school brats more than gangsta posers.

Now that reminds me of a story.

Few summers ago, my brother asked me to take the nephews to their ice hockey summer camp one week while he had to work downtown on an assignment (think: long, annoying commute). Kharma points! thinks me.

The one afternoon, I left the nephews in the arcade playing one of those domed ice hockey games while I looked around in the pro shop. A few minutes pass and my nephews wander into the pro shop.

“Wow, that was fast. Who won?”

Neither it seems. Two kids had come into the arcade and hijacked the hockey game. (???)

We head over to the arcade and sure enough, there’s two junior assholes playing the hockey game. (Stay calm, stay calm.) So I asked if they had taken over the hockey game while my nephews were still playing.

The taller junior asshole confirmed that yes, they had, and so?

“You have 5 seconds to move away from this game or I will make you. 1. 2. (They pause and look at each other) 5.” (They move. and fast.)

My nephews resume their game. I check out the other arcade offerings, because I just know the junior assholes have a senior asshole that’s incoming. Being an asshole is learned behavior, but I’m sure you know that already.

And here we go, senior asshole arrives … Mom … and she wants to know why I threatened her angels. (Because they’re idiots?) She was hopping mad, too — screaming, foul-mouthed bitch is going to contact whomever to straighten this out. (wfe)

I tell her to clean up the language around the kids (heh, irony) and explain that I didn’t technically threaten them; I WARNED them. Threaten implies a possibility that one won’t follow through and I was fully prepared to physically move them.

Well, that did it. She turns on her heels and goes to the front desk to fetch the Assistant Manager, not much older than the ten year-olds involved in this scuffle. I’m not sure what’s so hard to understand about “wait your turn”, but the concept was eluding the entire family.

Assistant Manager arrives at the arcade and surveys the situation. The junior assholes are looking rather bemused and unrepentant, senior asshole is beet red and flailing her arms, and my nephews are probably wishing their dad didn’t have to work downtown that week.

His verdict: “Everyone has to wait their turn.” (well, duh.) He suggests we all leave the arcade which was fine with the psycho because she has appointments now anyways, but tomorrow, her husband would take this up with me. (wfe — Does he not wait his turn either?)

Now later, it occurs to me that I’ll have to monitor that pair for the rest of the week to make sure they don’t try to extract some revenge out on the ice. Although the older boys did their drills on the other side of the rink, I wouldn’t put anything past those two … a stray puck, a high stick, accidents happen.

So instead of having a smoke out in the parking lot while the kids are in camp, I have to sit rinkside the rest of the week with an eagle eye on the junior thugs. Minor victory for me, their dad had to sit rinkside the rest of the week too, keeping an eye on me.

My brother called that night to ask how things were going and to thank me again.

“Well, there might have been an incident in the arcade.”

“O god.”

“No, it’s not exactly … bad. Let me tell you the story …”

He was not amused.