The Claw Machine's Worst Nightmare

We've all seen them. Sitting there looking so innocent, in the corner of a local Super-Mega Grocery / Pharmacy / Dental Checkup Center. Its native environment is any large mall, but can be found in any town with more than one traffic light and a McHeart Attack McDonalds. They're so famous they're "in-famous" :

The claw machine.

These insidious devices serve but one evil purpose against mankind. Deprive us of every quarter within a 5 mile radius. A twenty-five cent black hole. Bottomless pits for every two bits. And reports are surfacing that some of these malignant machines are now accepting dollar bills. And not even giving change back, but forcing the unsuspecting thrill-seeker to rage against the underpowered gripping action of the crudely fashioned robot hand on two or four (if you're lucky) turns. Such callousness, such barbaric cruelty, oh, the inhumanity!

But one has emerged from the countless faceless victims to near super-hero status.

My mother.

Armed with a $10 roll of quarters, nerves of steel, tried and true patience (matched only by indigenous tribes of the Amazon Basin that lay down on ant beds and suffer thousands of bites without flinching a muscle), and a Hefty trashbag, she strikes down injustice with the teddy bears of mercy.

Once, she approached a Claw Machine that was in the process of cleaning out this man's wallet. He was trying to win a stuffed toy for his child, whose eyes were fixated on the countless treasures above him. The dad was being abused, with no more quarters, and running short on dollar bills, he feared he may not be able to help his own flesh and blood. My mother politely stepped up, and with his permission into the batter's box. Her eyes darted around, moving systematically to each animal, calculating angles of attack, determining extraction coefficients (if an animal is packed in tightly relative to its neighbors, it has a high extraction coefficient), and settling on the most likely candidate. With one quarter, rapid reflexes and perfect timing, a toy found its way into the outstretched arms of the beaming child. The shocked, humble, grateful face of the stranger was payment enough, as my mother refused compensation from the nearly broke man.

When my mother isn't performing mercy missions, she is scouting out her Claw Machines like a lion stalking a wounded wildebeest. She knows which Claws will grip with any useable force. She knows which Claws will let you lower them half way rather than falling as far as they can and then closing. She knows which Claws close all the way, allowing her to aim the Claw's metallic digits for the loop that is commonly found on stuff animals. She also has to take into account the rotation of the Claw as it spirals toward the imprisoned masses. If I hadn't seen her save an incarcerated stuff animal by hooking that loop I would have never believed it. I have also witnessed first hand the rescue of two stuffed animals (serving a life sentence) in one Claw grab.

By far, the most daring prison break I had the privledge of viewing was when my mother discovered a Claw that allowed the operator to lower it in stages. As long as you didn't go to the lowest point, the Claw would not close and you would have 30 seconds of operation time. She positioned the Claw about midway down, and used the joystick to rock the Claw Gripper back and forth. She began to knock the caged creatures right into the exit bin, freeing 3 or 4 per quarter. Crowds gathered and cheered to see the escape artist working her magic. The firstfruits of her labor would go to any children watching, and the rest would fill the Hefty bag.

In Vegas, while card counting isn't illegal, if caught doing it, will get you labelled as a persona-non-grata and blacklisted from every casino. My mother was so good at cleaning out one local Claw Machine, that the man who refills Claw Machines for a living waited out of sight by his recently filled Machine to find out who was emptying it out. He probably suspected foul play, until he saw her close in, and begin cleaning out the Machine with just a roll of quarters. He approached her, dying to meet the legend who had stuck it to the Man (who designed such a diabolical device). Let's hope it wasn't to blacklist her from all future Claw Machines ...


By the way, her latest catch was this officially licensed Red Sox Bear. Little Nate Jr. Nathaniel is gonna love it!