Davey's Story - The 2023 Updated Version

Chapter 3: A New Friend, Games, Prizes, and 'Embarrassment'!

Wow a whole $20, I have never had so much money before. The most I would get out of Mom would be around $2, one time she did give me $5. Once, Grandmother sent me to pick up a few things from the corner market. For that trip I was handed a $10 bill, but then again it really wasn't mine. This $20 bill though was all mine to spend anyway I liked. Though I really wasn't sure if I wanted to spend it all here. A part of me was afraid to spend it, thinking that Dad may come and ask for it back. I was afraid he would say it was a mistake to give me so much money.

I finally decided to take the $20 bill up to the 'Prize Counter' and ask for change. I figured maybe I will use a few dollars of the money and that way I would have most of it left, to either spend or save.

As I approached the counter I told myself that I should double check and count the change I receive back. I hated to admit it, but I wasn't so good with math. I know the easy stuff but I have made mistakes before. Mostly because of not taking my time and counting slowly.

"Hi, can I get change for this?" I asked as I presented the $20 bill to the man behind the counter.

The man never said a word to me; he just took the $20's from me and then placed it in the cash register. Then he counted out a bunch of bills and handed them all to me. As I promised myself, I examined every bill. I found three $5 bills and five $1 bills. Using my fingers I counted the money all up and was sure that I received the correct amount of change for my $20 bill.

"Thank you sir," I said before running towards the games. As I turned and started to run from the counter, I finally heard the man speak to me.

"You're welcome kid, but please don't run! We don't want to see you get hurt." The man said loudly in order for me to hear it.

I did hear him so I immediately stopped running and just started walking as fast as I could. I was hoping to play Skeeball first and silently wishing that there was an open one that no one else was playing. I wouldn't mind playing against someone, but to be honest I haven't played the game in a while, so I was probably a little rusty.

Before I could play any of the games though, I needed to get some tokens. At first I was just going to change a couple $1 bills into tokens, until a kid walked up behind me, waiting his turn to also get some tokens.

"You know you should use one of the Fives instead of the Ones, as you will get a lot more tokens for your money." The kid explained to me as I was about to put one of the $1 bills into the machine.

"You do? How many more do I get?" I asked the boy.

"It says right there on the machine." The boy said pointing to the spot where it supposedly gave this information.

I looked to where the boy was pointing and then whispered in defeat, "Oh."

The problem was that I was even worse at reading then I was at math, because of this I only recognized a few words. I knew what the word token looked like so that one was easy and I recognized a few more. I decided to try and sound out the words, but silently as I didn't want the boy behind me to know I couldn't read so good.

The first word was a real hard one, "Rec-kieve" I tried sounding it out. "Now that doesn't sound right!"

At first I didn't realize that I had made my comment out loud. It was the boy responding to me that made me realize that I had indeed spoken out loud rather than to myself.

"What doesn't sound right?" The boy asked me, giving me a puzzled look.

"Damn" I thought to myself. "Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!" I repeated silently.

The boy was still looking at me quizzically and I knew I would have to tell him something. Here I was standing in front of the token machine and staring at it for way too long. I figured that the boy was probably upset having to wait so long to get his tokens."