There used to be a place where dreams come true. A place where everything negative was left at the door. A place where happiness was the only thing allowed. The place: Discovery Zone.

For those of you who weren’t loved by your parents and never got to go to Discovery Zone, I feel really sorry for you.

This place was awesome. It had an indoor maze with slides, tubes to crawl around in, and numerous ball pits.

As soon as you walked in, you wanted to run away from your parents and into the gigantic maze. But you had to wait while the dopey teenagers who worked there put a bracelet on your wrist so that no one would steal you.

But as soon as you had that bracelet on: It. Was. On.

First your shoes had to go; no shoes were allowed in Discovery Zone, as you might kick someone in the face, which might be awesome at the time, but would mean having to sit out or go play in the little kid’s area, which featured a slide. One. One slide.

After that, you were free to roam. My personal favorite part was the glider thing. Another dopey teenager would stand there as your formed a line, and when it was your turn, you grabbed onto the bars and held on for dear life, as touching the ball pit below meant death or, even worse, teasing from your friends who called you a sissy.

There was one slide that was a series of pipes that rotated and moved you down the line like a conveyor belt. The person who designed this slide should be fired. Every time you’d go down it, the pipes would pinch your behind. To stand up and walk down the slide involved one or both of these things: falling down or getting yelled at by someone working there.

In the back of Discovery Zone was a ball pit hidden from plain sight. You had to crawl around and find it; the architects weren’t just going to give you an easy-to-find ball pit.

There was a hoop for playing basketball in the ball pit, which was only part of the fun for this ball pit. The other was that it was hidden and you could wrestle with the kid who cut in front of you.

Then a voice rang out saying something jumbled together like, “BirthdayinroomfourforJohnPaulGreen. BirthdayinroomfourforJohnPaulGreen. Pleasecometothepartyroom.”

Enough with the yelling; we get the idea. We know you don’t want to work here, but at least try to make my birthday the happiest day ever. Plus, I could never understand the intercom, as the person speaking had no concept of punctuation.

Once you escaped the ball pit, you would then run to the corresponding party room. By this time, your socks were black on the bottom and, for some reason, they were stretched out at the toes like clown socks.

In the party room, there was a chair shaped like a throne, which was where the birthday kid would sit. No one wanted to be there really; you could look out the window and see all the other kids playing and having fun, and all you wanted to do was get back out there and start playing again.

For food, it pretty much stayed the same. Pizza for the entrée and cake with those little Blue Bell ice cream cups (which were only made in vanilla for some reason) and – if you got lucky – punch.

Then you’d go play some more and then your mom or dad would yell at you to come out. Never mind that you had tons of new toys to play with; you didn’t want to leave. And for good reason.

Discovery Zone was the happiest place on earth. Until its owners filed for bankruptcy in 1996 after recording debts of $366.8 million. Then Charles E. Cheese, or “Chuck E. Cheese” bought all of the Discovery Zones and converted them into Chuck E. Cheese restaurants.

That rat ruined my childhood.

John Paul Green is a sophomore theater major. He can be reached for comment at [email protected].