Attack on Anaheim Mini Golf/Arcade

I don't remember exactly when this was. Em, maybe you can remind me but I think we were 13. My best friend Emily had lived in Anaheim when she was younger. Her mom needed to make a trip out there to run some errands and took us with her. She dropped us off at a place that had an arcade and a miniature golf course. This day has become one of my favorite memories because it seems to be a good example of Emily and I and how much fun we always seemed to have together.

First of all, this was shortly after Terminator 2 had come out and we were right smack in the middle of our early teenage girl life which meant we were absolutely in love with several famous boys and each had claimed our favorite. Emily's biggest star love at the time was Eddie Furlong. (In case you were wondering, mine was Leonardo DiCaprio) Anyway, this made the Terminator 2:Judgement Day arcade game an instant draw for us and our spending money. I wish I knew how much money we dumped into that game, but it was a lot. It was most of what we had and therefore we couldn't afford to play a real game of mini golf.

But, smart girls we were and we realized we didn't need to play a real game to have fun on the mini golf course. So, when T2 had taken as much money as we could afford to give it we headed outside into the sun to wander around the course. It was a typical course with small pools of water set here and there within the 18 holes. Well, anyone who's played mini golf near water knows that lots of balls get hit in the water and left there. So, I decided that the water was shallow enough to walk in and get the balls that were sitting in them.

The level of the water pools was controlled by large PVC pipes set into drains at the bottom. This would keep enough water inside the pools but if the level got to be above the PVC pipe it would drain out.

I was quickly going into different pools of water and picking out balls (because I was pretty confident I wasn't supposed to be going into them) and we were wandering around the course. I don't remember exactly what we were doing with the golf balls, but that's not the important part of the story. As we were walking along we realized that the green 'grass' at the hole we were at was wet. Knowing that there probably wasn't supposed to be water there we stopped and looked around. Then we realized that there was water all over that was obviously not where it was supposed to be. I looked over at one of the pools I had been in and realized that the PVC pipe had been knocked off of the drain, so all of the water was emptying out of that pool. Somehow that created a flood that was covering several holes on their golf course. We shot a panicked look at one another, dropped all of the golf balls we were holding on to, and did that quick walk but trying not to look like we're running thing. We didn't have a car so we couldn't run away completely so we headed into the arcade and very nonchalantly started blending in to the crowd as much as we could.

We never got yelled at so I guess we acted pretty well. But we were very relieved when her mom showed up and we could leave. I don't know if her mom really understood why we were anxious to get in the car and go.

I'm sure Em could add things I'm leaving out. We laughed at ourselves a lot for that day, and still get a good chuckle out of it when we reminisce!