Play Meter

18 and too young for free play
As long as there are the Michigan State Police, the children of that state
will never have to feel the humiliating degradation of dumping their dreams,
their future and their careers into the coin slot of an amusement machine in
search of that fatal dream killer - the free play.
The Michigan State Police are a wise and worthy crew. They sport an
uncanny ability to see beyond the innocent flashing lights of your average
flipper game, beyond the apparent simplicity of earning a free play for
scoring highly. They see through the innocence and the simplicity to the
intriguing, cloak-and-dagger decadence of heartless 1930's-style mobsters
who hide behind every lamp post and lure our nation's youth to an ultimate,
unfortunate end.
These men in blue have been around. They've seen the wretched epileptic
spasms that can engulf the unsuspecting naive youth who slowly and
painfully injects his college tuition fund into a flipper game for the bonus
play that never seems to come.
They've seen these same youths, months later, clutching a bottle of cheap
red wine beneath their tattered and torn overcoats, searching for a dry and
warm place to curl up for the night, unmistakeably defeated and
panhandling for still more quarters to pour into the chute of a nearby
skid-row arcade.
But the Michigan State Police won't let these shady, unethical and
inhumane Michigan coin machine operators be the undoing of their
neighbors' children. And they're not sitting back and resting simply because
the dreaded free play is now banned for flipper players of all ages in
Michigan.
For sinister and evil forces are already at work in Michigan - namely the
Music Operators of Michigan - who have the disgusting gall to sponsor a bill
to legalize free play! And for under-18-year-olds, at that!
Their emotions ablaze and their better judgment for the protection of
Michigan minors at heart, the Michigan State Police have told officials in the
state that they firmly oppose legalization of the free play for
under-18-year-olds. They want the state to make a point of keeping the
state's children away from a machine that awards free play.
What a courageous and inspiring group of men - devoting so much of
their valuable time and efforts to such an all-important cause. $uch a
community-minded group of individuals would probably also consider
banning minors from playing the 18th hole of local miniature golf courses,
since often a hole-in-one on the 18th earns the putter a free game.
Keep up the good work, ~jchigan State Police! Though many
cold-hearted conspirators in your state will no doubt lebel you as
reactionaries because of what they claim is illogical reasoning, we know
better. Don't we?
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