The other day I took my son and his friend to a local indoor arcade-like facility. I had thought the 3500 points per child would have sufficed for the entire duration… but for one of the kids, I was wrong.

Now, my son, who prefers the bird in a hand, was carefully calculating the points per game that he wanted to play. He made sure to research the games that cost fewer points and ended up leaving the place, 3 hours later, with 2900 points left.

His friend, we’ll call him, Charlie Sheen, was a different story. Within the first 20 minutes he had wasted 1000 points trying to win an Ipod Touch. The next 10 minutes he wasted 1800 points trying to win extra tickets. When I suggested he stopped playing the “claw” games to try to win toys, he assured me he’d only try one more time.

In the end, the friend and I learned each learned a valuable lesson…. he learned that I was right to warn him and I learned that his future “best man” will likely be his sponsor.