It is another childhood memory that I remember vividly. I was probably 10 and I was at the grocery store with my mom. We checked out and as we exited through the first set of automatic doors and into the space with shopping carts and drink machines, I noticed a claw game. This particular claw game was filled with stuffed animals and a determined woman was stationed at the machine.

I noticed she was actually playing the game, not just jerking the joy stick back and forth while the claw was disabled like my quarter-less brother and I would do. She had fed the game a couple dollars and seemed to be pretty close to dropping the claw in precisely the right spot. However, an inch or two is everything and she reached for new bills once or twice more. By the time she was probably $5 in—a fortune to me—she deployed the claw and it grasped a stuffed animal. I held my breath as the claw elevated the toy and shakily maintained its grip until dropping it into the prize chute.

Without even celebrating or smiling, she pushed open the prize door, grabbed the stuffed animal, handed it to me, and walked through the second set of automatic doors and into the parking lot.

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Just like when you win the first time at gambling, watching someone win at the claw game can be intoxicating. I thought I could replicate her feat and tried constantly over the next couple years. However, after not coming close to winning a prize at local arcades and stores, I came to my senses in the same way I did about casinos—I was just wasting my money.

Unfortunately, my kids are still in the stage I found myself stuck in for two years. They feel like they have a chance to actually win at the claw game. Unless it is one of the “play until you win” candy claw games where you can win a single, hard Tootsie Roll that wouldn’t even retail for a penny, I have tried to convince them that these games are practically rigged.

You see, the chances of pulling anything out of the prize area of a claw game seem like zilch. These days, the claws themselves are finicky, cheap, and weak. A human hand would have a better chance at catching lightning than a claw would have at catching a prize. A couple years ago, I actually vented my frustration about claw games when unloading on the modern day racket known as the American arcade.

On Saturday night, I must have been in a good mood. Despite watching my kids waste so much money on claw machines over the past few years, I decided to reward them for semi-good behavior at Red Robin. As we left the restaurant, instead of gravitating to the balloons, Sloan and Beau huddled around the new claw game that I guess Red Robin felt compelled to install. It was a rare instance when I actually had a dollar on me so I decided to feed the machine.

In another rare anomaly, Beau conceded to Sloan to take the turn. I kid you not: I had already turned my head as Sloan lined up to drop the claw because I wanted to spare myself the sight of her badly missing. But as I listened to the claw deploy with my eyes facing the opposite direction, I heard it actually latch onto something. I turned around to see that the claw had clutched a stuffed dinosaur. I watched in disbelief as the grip remained and the dinosaur was successfully dropped and deposited into the prize chute. Sloan had won a prize on her first and only try.

My daughter then retrieved the prize and handed it to her brother—completely unaided by me. I didn’t know what was more miraculous: Sloan winning at the claw game or giving her prize away to her younger sibling.  Beau walked out of Red Robin hugging his new stuffed animal.

Beau holds the stuffed dinosaur his sister won for him while playing the claw game at Red Robin.

Once in a blue moon, a claw machine can actually render some joy. Don’t Blink.