So I was eight years old and I was with my family, my parents and my brother and we were at a fair. And I wanted to play some games. There was this one prize I thought was really cool and it was at one of those games where you throw the darts, you pop the balloons and then see how many balloons you can pop. The guy running it was, yeah, I want to say he was Lithuanian based on his accent, it was very thick. And he came by and you know, I told him I want to play he’s like, “okay, no problem. We can do that.“ So, I hand him some money and he hands me the darts.
Well afterwards, I got done throwing my darts. Then he kept handing them to me and he goes “try again. Try again. Try again.” And he wasn’t asking me for money at all. I was very confused because most of the games you would pay before you play. And so he just kept handed me the darts. I’m like okay well if you’re not gonna charge me that’s okay. So I began throwing more of the darts each time and then I decided I was done. I tried to walk away and he grabs my shoulder and goes “no, no you have to pay now.” I thought okay. I thought I was gonna owe him a few extra dollars and turns out it was up to $110 that he was looking for.
I started to freak out and I can’t remember where my parents were at the time. I think they were sitting at a table watching and my brother was off somewhere else. And so I looked at my parents I told them come over I have a problem and so they came by and the guy asked like “oh this your son” like yeah. “Well, he owes me $110.” And then that is when my parents snapped and they went “why?” and he was like “oh well he kept playing.” My mom — that was to the point where she had red in her eyes, not so much angry at me but angry at the fact that the carny took advantage of me and thought he’s an 8 year old kid, he doesn’t understand this and you just hustled him for a ton of money. But the guy wasn’t hearing it like “well you owe me $110, so you have to pay up. And My dad goes “all right, fine here’s the money just stop.” But it didn’t stop there because then my parents went immediately to the manager and explained to them what happened. Then we came back and I saw the manager was talking with the guy running the game and we did get $110 back. It was definitely an experience and I will never forget it.