Laser Brothers In Arms

Last night, I took the boys to a laser-tag/video-arcade/mini-indoor-amusement park.  It's one of their favorite places, but I've never gone their aside from birthday parties before, because it's so expensive.  But once I got there, I saw a rare window of opportunity:  Daniel loves laser tag.  He was shocked that I had never played it.  And here we were, on a Sunday night at the beginning of their school vacation, with just the three boys.  So I splurged.  $16 for one person to play laser tag means $48 for three.  I'm not used to spending that kind of money on anything that doesn't involve a several-hour engagement or a nice big meal for the family, but I made a rather spontaneous exception.

When you play laser tag, your first tag is to pick out a name for yourself, which you write in the upper-right corner of the otherwise-ominous release form that you have to sign - one for each child, and one for yourself, if you're playing.  I was "Big Boris," - the randomness of which the boys appreciated.  Ian, to my astonishment, was "IanPokemon."  And Daniel was... "Daniel."  Some people are very comfortable in their own shoes.

So they put us and a roughly 20-year-old couple against six, happy kids - mostly girls.  Needless to say, we trounced them.  You had to pick a color for your team - you could be either the "green" team or the "red" team; the woman from the couple on our team said "green" at almost the same moment that Daniel started shouting, "Red - red - red!"  I was shocked that Daniel should pick such a dramatic color. The grownup acquiesced.

So we played and won.  Then, since I had a two-for-the-price-of-one coupon, Scottish Daddy let the boys do a round of bumper cars.  At the last minute, before they were about to start up the ride with just the two boys, a brother-and-sister pair arrived on the scene, and of course Daniel was thrilled to have more bumping victims as he and Ian drove around with big twinkles in their eyes.

Then we splurged for refreshments:  Sprite for Ian, root beer for Daniel.  The two sat and looked over our painfully detailed score cards - computer-generated print-outs with exhaustive data produced from our extremely high-tech laser-tagging apparatus.  The print-outs showed not just who got how many points, but how many times you shot each person in the game, including friendly fire.  The "friendly fire" piece was hyper-humiliating, because it took Big Boris Daddy awhile to distinguish between friend and foe - the red and green lights shining from multiple points on our vests were a bit too subtle for me during most of the match, it turned out.  Daniel's New England Patriots jersey helped me recognize him before my trigger-happy impulses could take over, since it was white and therefore gleamed in the phosphorescent lighting of the otherwise-very-dark room ("Bruschi", number 64, gets the credit for that).

I was a bit troubled over the great splurge, but not long before we left, Daniel announced that this was one of the best days of his life.

And Big Boris went home happy.

(February 22, 2015)