Part one. Finding a sacred place.
From my own experience, the most sacred places are not always what you would call “sacred places.” Sacred places are places where you can go and have meaningful experiences with the people you love, while sheltered from the distractions of life. A place that allows you to concentrate on what is important.
It should come as no surprise that, for a person like me, one of those places is a video game arcade in the local shopping mall. It ticks all the boxes because it allows me to go there with my son, Emmanuel, and it allows us to spend a couple of hours concentrating, if you can concentrate, in a place full of loud noises, jingle-style music, buzzes, and flashing lights. But we do go, and we do enjoy ourselves.
We’ve gone to the one at the local mega mall for the last four and a half years. When Emmanuel figured out that by playing the games you could win tickets, and that he could redeem the tickets for anything up at the redemption desk without having to ask for his mother’s or my permission, it became super competitive for him.
He didn’t just want to win for the sake of winning. He wanted to win to accumulate as many tickets as he could, so that he could buy the things that he wanted without having to ask for money or use money that we’ve given him. Let’s be frank, every time he tries to use the money that we’ve given him for chores or for tooth fairy money or anything like that, I never let him put his hands in his pocket. I always stop him.
In fairness, it’s the way I was brought up. My father never let me put my hands in my pocket to buy anything. He said that was his job.
The one game Emmanuel loves to play the most is a carnival-style game where little coins edge closer and closer to falling off based on how you shoot other coins onto the table where they’re being shifted. You play the game a few times, and you get to go for the bonus round. The bonus round is basically just a spinning roulette wheel. If you time it correctly, you can win 1,000 tickets.
My best estimate is that he’s won that game about 30 times. He and some of his friends have redeemed quite a few tickets, too. But generally speaking, we carry a balance of around 24,000 tickets on the card.
One day, after our vacation, we went to the arcade just to check the balance on the card. Sure enough, it came up as dead zero.
That’s when I asked to speak to someone. I can’t remember the exact name of the person that I spoke to on the floor. What I do remember is it was a man with a name usually associated with a girl, something like Erin. And Erin insisted to me that there was no way that the system was wrong, and that I had lost all of my tickets and there was nothing that could be done.
Emmanuel was with me, and I have to say, as a father, it’s a really devastating moment in your life when, even for such a trivial thing as a video game ticket balance, you see genuine disappointment on the face of your child.
So I knew that was not a moment to walk away and let things die.
I told Erin, I’m not sure that was his name… but we’ll say for the sake of this story it was his name… I told Erin that I wanted to speak to the manager.
He said, “Well, this is not really the kind of thing the manager wants to talk about.”
And I said, “Well, it’s the kind of thing that I want to talk to the manager about, so let me talk to the manager.”
He said, “Fine, I’ll get JC.”
I jokingly replied, “We don’t need to go that high. I just need to talk to the arcade manager.”
Erin, who was Filipino or maybe Nepalese, didn’t really get the joke, but I understand that even though people speak English, they might not speak colloquial English, and they might not understand the pitch and the frequency of the words that I use. I’ve lost more good comedy that way.
A few minutes later, another man appeared, this one not dressed in the same style of shirt as the rest of the kids in the arcade. He walked over to me, spoke to Erin, his colleague, then shook my hand and said, “I’m JC. How can I help you?”
I made the same ecclesiastical joke. I said, “Well, you do know who JC is, don’t you?”
He says, “Yes, I know that joke, sir.” I was dealing with a Filipino.
I explained to him that even though we had been in multiple times in 2026 and had redeemed tickets and added tickets to the card just as we were told to do, the card registered a zero balance.
He said, “Sir, there’s not much that I can do.” That’s when Emmanuel sort of tugged on my arm and said, “Baba, why don’t we just go?” And I turned to him and said, rather sternly, “Emmanuel, let me talk to this man.”
JC looked at me and asked, “What is your son’s name?”
I replied, “His name is Emmanuel.” JC kind of smiled and said, “Do you know what that name means?”
For context, we get that question a lot. Mostly from people in East Africa, Kenya, Uganda, places like that, but also from Filipinos, who are deeply spiritual people.
I told JC, “Yes, I know what Emmanuel means. I wouldn’t have given my son that name if I didn’t know how heavy it was to wear.”
JC was a bit taken aback, grimaced, and said, “Look, can I have your telephone number? Let me see what I can do to fix this.”
Recognizing that this was the proverbial brush-off, I gave him my number, but abandoned all hope of ever receiving any follow-up.
Part two. Our prayers are answered.
About a week later, I got a random text message from someone whose name didn’t appear, but the logo of the arcade at the mega mall showed up.
I texted back and said, “Is this JC?” He replied, “Yes, sir.” I continued, “JC, what are you going to tell me?”
He said that he’d spoken to his manager, and his manager insisted that there was nothing that they could do. But JC was moved by the fact that my son and I had been there as loyal customers for over four years. So he decided, on the spot, to make a goodwill gesture to reinstate 24,000 tickets. All I needed to do was visit the arcade three times over the next three months, make small purchases of tokens, bring it to his attention, and he would add the 24,000 tickets to my account.
I was very, very impressed that he would do that. I understand contextually, how difficult it would’ve been to get approval for something like that.
I also understand why they would want to structure it as three visits over three months, because a less ethical person might have demanded to have all of the tickets reinstated, gone in, spent no money, and then redeemed all of the tickets all at once. There was no way for JC to know (well, not THAT JC to know!) that it wasn’t my style.
Part three. The start of a beautiful friendship.
One morning, I had to make an impromptu trip to the mall to buy some epoxy to fix a pair of my moccasins.
Yes, I know there are shoemakers who do that, but you should know that I refuse to pay someone to do something I think that I can do better myself or something I could learn that I’ve never known how to do before.
I parked my car, took the elevator to the third level, and as I was walking past the arcade, I thought to text JC. I sent him a message, “JC, I’m here at the mall. Would now be a good time for me to make my first purchase of tokens?”
He immediately replied, “Yes, sir. I will come down to the cashier’s desk and help you.” Which he did.
While waiting for him, I was talking to one of the girls at the cashier’s desk, and my phone rang. It was a telephone number from Chechnya.
Not a place where I have a lot of friends. Not because I don’t like Chechen people; I don’t actually know any Chechen people, and if I did, maybe I would like them.
The girl at the cashier’s desk said, “Don’t answer this, sir. It’s a scam caller.”
I said, “But those are the best ones to answer because you don’t have to be nice to them.”
So I put the phone on speakerphone and gave the person on the other end of the line my customary “What can I do you for?”
At which point, the girl at the cashier’s desk, I think her name was something like Azalea, let off a steady stream of intense vulgarity. The kind that I’m not used to hearing other people say, the kind that I’m used to saying.
She said, “F*ck you, you scammer sh*t. You tried to steals our money, tried to steals our pay. F*ck you. I hope you die, you f*ck.”
Partly embarrassed, I hung up my telephone.
I said, “Azalea, I couldn’t have said that better myself if I tried.”
She laughed and explained that one time scammers had almost tricked her by requesting her national ID number in relation to some sort of criminal investigation.
I found it puzzling that she didn’t find it more confounding that they wanted her national ID number, but that it was totally plausible there was a criminal investigation.
Clearly, Azalea had a spicy side that did not show itself at the cashier’s desk. I like spicy people. They make the world taste better.
JC came down, observed that I had loaded $100 worth of tokens onto the account. He said, “Good, sir. Good. Now, please come with me to the redemption desk.”
I found it funny to follow a man named JC to the redemption desk, but it’s not the craziest thing that’s ever happened to me, just the craziest thing that happened to me that morning.
We went to the redemption desk. He reached behind the counter and pulled out a shopping bag full of bricks of freshly minted tickets, and said, “Here, sir. These are for Emmanuel.”
And I said, “This is very unusual. And I appreciate it, but I do want to tell you that you’ve gone way above and beyond to help us.”
To which JC said, “Well, sir, there are many things here. One is that you are a valued customer. Our system shows that you have had that card and used that card since 2022, over four years. It was very difficult for me to get the management to approve this, so I cannot just add the tickets to your account electronically. You have to actually scan all of the tickets at the reader, but my friend here will help you.”
He pointed to his coworker, Salama.
And then he said, most touchingly, “If it were not for Emmanuel, your son, we would not do this.”
I was really floored when he said that.
It’s easy to misidentify good virtues in bad people. I suppose it’s also easy to expect the commonplace from people who are actually phenomenal.
I know my son is not a common person. He is a phenomenal person, as I constantly tell anybody who will listen.
Emmanuel is the person that I want to be when I grow up. I want to be that carefree. I want to be that fearless. I want to be that confident in my own abilities, and I want to be able to back up that confidence with a track record of exceptional performance, both on the sporting field (because Emmanuel is a great athlete. He’s 10 and a half, but he’s a great runner. He’s a great football player. He’s a great skier. He’s great at pretty much anything that requires a uniform, specialized equipment and especially if it requires specialized shoes that cost me a fortune).
But he’s also a fantastic student, routinely performing well above average in his math and science. And he’s a phenomenal storyteller. He’s got a mind full of outrageous, outlandish scenarios, just like someone else that I know.
And fundamentally, he’s a very sensitive and sentimental person who likes to joke around but does not like to hurt other people’s feelings.
So in that moment, JC, who appeared like a normal sort of low-level lackey for the typical kind of mall-run video game concession, demonstrated that he was actually a person of great depth and character.
And he somehow instinctively knew that my son was the same, either because of his name or because of the intensity with which I had argued and fought on his behalf for what amounted to a few hundred dollars in video game tickets and tokens. Amen, and the