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Showbiz Pizza or Bust!

It was May 4, 1984 and I became 12 years old. For the last two years I had pestered my parents to let me have my birthday party at Showbiz Pizza Place. Now for those who are not old enough to remember what Showbiz Pizza Place was, I will tell you. Showbiz was the child or even teenager's dream place to go for pizza, music and lots and lots of arcade video games! While you were waiting for the pizza to be delivered to your table, you had the opportunity to listen to the band play music or to go play video games. Where do you think I was most of the time? If you guessed that I was always playing arcade games you are only half-right. While playing all of the latest arcade games was very exciting, I especially enjoyed listening to the Rock-a-fire Explosion featuring Billy Bob. The music that the band played were mostly oldies including the Beatles who were my most favorite band of all at the time. The band also played top 40 music that were popular hits at the time. Great music that they played but what really made them special is that they were animatronic! That's what I said, animatronic. These were robots in disguise as animals playing and singing in a band.

Now I can go a lot more into all of what Showbiz Pizza place is, but right now the spotlight is on me and my 12th birthday, so you will just have to wait another time to hear More about Showbiz! Anyway, for the last two years I had been bugging my parents about allowing me to have my birthday there. They finally gave the green light and now it was up to me to decide who I was going to invite from school. I was only allowed to invite one friend and none of the girls in the sixth grade liked me so now it was up to me inviting another friend. The problem with that is even when you really don't have many friends or no friends at all, when you mention something as exciting as Showbiz, well, everyone wants to be your friend then!
I finally invited one kid I knew whose name was Travis. Me and Travis got along alright and he was never really against me or anything, so I decided to invite him. On the evening of my birthday, my family and I all picked up Travis from his home and then we all went to Showbiz. As soon as we got there, I was handed all of these tokens, and I believe there were like 100 tokens in all! Talk about a kid's dream! I believe that I was supposed to distribute the tokens evenly among everyone, including my little brother but being the selfish

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