It was a laser tag party, which meant I invited Mark's closest friends to run around a 7,000 square foot warehouse shooting each other with laser guns. I've spent approximately eight years now telling Mark not to aim his laser pointer cat toy at anybody--then, yesterday, I turned him and all his buddies loose with explicit directions to do exactly that.
Granted, I did tell them not to aim at anybody's eyes, but with the all the chaos, it was hard not to.
But let me back up a bit...
When the boys met up at the laser tag place, they were excited. They were high on adrenaline and excitement, and they took it out on their surroundings, bouncing, jumping and crashing into each other.
They lined up to check in, standing behind another birthday party made up of seven- and eight-year-old girls. The girls were dressed in pastel leggings, striped shirts, and an abundance of flowery hair clips. They were holding hands and telling stories. I realized they were going to get eaten up by my rambunctious group of boys.
"They just kept shooting me!" he told us, shaking his head. "They stood all around me yelling, 'Shoot him!' It was AWFUL!"
I laughed at the image of those sweet little girls exacting their revenge for a good two hours.
At check-in, each boy received an access device, which looked like a giant plastic key chain. They promptly ran around the lobby attaching their devices to every outlet or metal bolt sticking out of the wall. I even caught one boy trying to wedge it into the soda machine.
The next step was rules, which included no running (yeah, right) no covering your targets (yeah, right, even more) and playing fairly. The little girls had lots of questions, such as can you have teams, and how do you put your name into your gun? The squirming boys had only one question--when do we start? (They did eventually embrace the teamwork plan, though, when they all agreed to ambush birthday boy Mark.)
And then they released us into the maze. Like I said, it was 7,000 square feet, two stories tall, a series of angled jet black shelters trimmed in colorful glowing neon paint. The place was filled with black lights and fog, giving it an eerie feeling. There were also mirrors and floors with partial fenced gaps, so you could shoot up or down through them. I wondered if the mirrors would reflect the lasers, but I never successfully dinged anybody using the old smoke and mirrors trick.
The kids started shooting each other the minute the door opened, but two minutes later, they were scattered all over the place. It was fun to chase them down.
Each contestant picked a funny name for the competition. One of the boys, Jonah, chose a hilarious name and announced himself each time he shot me.
"Here comes Princess Buttercup!" he'd yell, and then barrage me in lasers. He shot me more than anyone else did, mostly because I started laughing so hard every time he yelled out Princess Buttercup.
It was a blast. After 15 minutes of chasing down the boys (and more than a few little girls--who proved much tougher than they looked), the game ended. The boys were still giddy, and now sweaty.
I thought I'd done all right, but according to my score card...not so much.
That's right, I had a bad girl name (Mama Mayhem), but did not have the aim to back it up. I came in 15th place overall.
I passed on the second game to set up the party room. By the time the boys came out from the second round, I'd set up the pizzas, drinks and awesome cake my friend Kimberly baked for Mark, who requested a soccer ball. I loved the chocolate sprinkles she used for the black squares, and the green frosting around the bottom that looked like grass blades. And it was super yummy!
With their boundless energy, I was nervous about hosting seven 12- and 13-year-old boys on my own. But they were great--inhaling pizza as they compared scores, and laughing as Josh tried to eat an entire blood orange (unpeeled) without using his hands.
There was only one scary moment, when I realized the lighter for the candles was missing--and found three boys trying to light all 13 candles on one half-slice of cake. (Fine, I admit it--after my initial freak out, I lit the candles for them to see what would happen.)
We sang happy birthday to Mark, watched him open his gifts (all cash and cards--he was stoked). Then, sufficiently sugared up on cake and soda, I turned the boys loose on the arcade. After being hit by a flying air hockey puck (I was nowhere near the game!), hit by a basketball (I was nowhere near the hoop), and returning four stolen Foosballs, I finally put those boys in the car and drove them home.
As the boys in the back seat laughed hysterically over pictures in my People magazine, poor Mark, who was fighting a cold, drifted off to sleep. I felt bad that he felt so bad, but then he smiled in his sleep. And I didn't feel nearly so bad--because even sick, I knew Mark had a blast celebrating his foray into teenhood.
And that was a pretty great thing to see.
No comments:
Post a Comment