The End of Days at Dave and Busters

The wall of noise surprises me every time. It’s not rock concert noise, too-close-to-the-fireworks-boat noise, or even football stadium noise. It’s Dave and Busters’s noise, a kind of gratuitous aural assault that sounds like joy to anyone under 10 and death to everyone else.

I don’t say the words Dave and Busters until we are already in the car because if the boys get a hold of these words before then I will hear them in a loop at the top of their lungs until I can no longer hear anything because we are at Dave and Busters.