Laser Tag and Air Hockey

Author’s Note: I wrote this story over twenty years ago. As I often do, I’ve taken an actual event and related it, I hope, with some humor. Is every fact strictly true? No, but at least 90% of it is. Or maybe 80%. Either way, I hope you enjoy it!

So my brother Eric and his wife, Aimee, want us all to go to Acres of Fun to let the kids play and for a game of Laser Tag. I am almost forty years old; I do not want to play Laser Tag. It is stupid and pointless. It is beneath my dignity . . . way beneath it. But I do not tell anyone that I am feeling this way. I do not want to be petty.

So we get to Acres of Fun. It takes about three hours for the guy at the desk to figure out how to charge us for six kids and four adults. You’d think they’d never had a group this big come in before.

So then Eric gets us all paid for (he and Aimee are paying for this, which is another reason I have vowed not to grouse), and the kids go over to the “Soft Play” zone. You know, that’s like a McDonald’s Playground, with tunnels and a couple of ball pits and areas to climb on and all of that. The little kids like it a lot, but Matthew, who is twelve, feels it’s beneath him. I can relate; that’s how I feel about Laser Tag.

So after not very long Eric says, “Let’s sign up for Laser Tag.” We have to pay extra for this, and we have to wait until they get a group together. Eric, Aimee, Matthew, Ben, Weston, and I aren’t enough for a group? Apparently not, because they put us together with some teenage punks and a couple of guys who are about forty or so and must be real losers to spend a Monday night playing Laser Tag.

Cindy, my wife, doesn’t want to play, but she asks the guy running the Laser Tag attraction if she can go in and just watch. The guy running the Laser Tag attraction says, “Yeh.”

So the guy running the Laser Tag attraction takes us into this cold little room with its walls painted black—outside the Laser Tag area—and tells us how to play. We can shoot each other in the chest, shoulders, back, or gun. We have to hold our gun with both hands or it won’t work. When we get hit we will not be able to shoot our guns for five or ten seconds. There are three bases hidden in the play area. If we find one or more of them, we have to shoot it at least three times, and that will give us a higher score.

I am paying close attention because if I have to do this, I might as well understand it completely. I hope the boys are listening carefully.

The guy says, “Do you have any questions?” I say, “How long will this go on?” “Twelve minutes,” he says. Great, I think. Twelve precious minutes of my life wasted. I could be home watching Green Acres, but no, I am trapped in a little cold black room learning how to play Laser Tag.

We go into the next room, which is even blacker because it is lit only by blacklight. The guy says, “Pick up a vest with a gun attached. Make sure its lights are blinking, otherwise it won’t work.” That’s really how he said it, with a comma splice. Stupid ignorant Laser Tag attraction guy. Too bad he can’t get a real job, I think.

Everyone rushes to pick up a blinking vest with gun attached. I am not in a hurry; consequently, all the blinking ones are gone. I hear myself say, “Don’t I get to play?” and immediately think how well I am hiding my bad attitude. No one, hearing my plaintive request, would know that deep down inside I could care less.

The guy puts a new battery pack in a vest, it starts blinking, and I strap it on. It fits great. I bet I look cool in it, but I don’t ask my wife, not wanting to embarrass her.

As I look around, I notice that Aimee’s sweater glows purplish-white in the blacklight. The fool! What an easy target she’ll make! She should have dressed in dark colors, like me.

So then the guy says, “We’ll go into the Laser Tag arena now. You will have forty-five seconds in which to spread out and hide. Then you’ll hear a siren, your guns will be activated, and you can begin firing.”

Into the Arena

I make sure I am the leader of the group as they open the doors. Might as well try to do my best—to be a good example to my boys and all.

We enter and disperse. I find what seems to be a good place to hide. I stand there waiting . . . and waiting. . . . Surely forty-five seconds have passed! Come on! Come on!

The siren goes off, and I jump, pulling the trigger and firing wildly about. But nothing happens. My gun is defective! That battery pack must not have worked!

Cindy, who is not playing, but just observing, which is really what I wish I were doing, walks by.

“This stupid gun won’t work!” I shriek.

“Are you holding it like he said, with both hands?”

“Oh yeah, yeah, I remember.”

Bam! My vest flashes as my son Matthew shoots me from a walkway across the room. I spin around, looking for him, but have to wait the ten seconds for my gun to work again. Just as it lights up, bam! I am shot again, this time by my son Ben. “Knock it off, you twerps!” I yell. Then I think maybe I’d better be quiet and hide somewhere. I run and hide behind a partition until my gun starts working.

Bam! I am shot by one of those forty-year-old losers, who runs around the corner of my partition unexpectedly. He probably never got married, I think. Probably never even kissed a girl.

I see movement; I fire and aim, in that order. A hit!

“I’m not playing,” says my wife.

“This is no fun,” I say, my bad attitude just beginning to show through a wee bit. “I keep getting shot, and I haven’t shot anybody yet.”

“Maybe you should crouch down and run around and hide,” Cindy says. “That’s what I see other people doing.”

Must be nice to have the luxury to walk leisurely around observing these farcical goings-on, I muse. But I say nothing as I crouch down and start running around and hiding.

Bam! I am shot in the gun by my nephew Weston. He giggles in a way I find quite irritating and runs around a corner. I note that he is crouching and hiding. How come it works for him but not for me?

Suddenly I see one of those teenage punks with his back to me, peeking around a corner at someone else. Bam! I nail him right between the shoulder blades. It is really cool to see the laser shoot out the end of my submachine gun, hit his vest, and cause the lights to blink.

I crouch and run up a ramp to the second level. As I round the corner at the top, I am ambushed by some jerks whom I don’t have time to identify. Maybe I am related to some of them, I don’t know. Suddenly in the moments prior to my short-lived ersatz death I see it all clearly: they were waiting for someone to come up that ramp. Well, two can play at that game. Or three, or whatever.

So I go back down the ramp a little ways and crouch where it turns a corner. Now anyone coming up or down the ramp will have to pass me! Ha! Let them try!

Someone comes out of the top level. Bam! Shot him in the shoulder!

Someone starts up the ramp. I turn, fire, and aim, as is my usual practice. “Ha! Got you!” I cry in triumph.

“Da-a-ad!” says Ben, chagrined.

“Come on, be tough. It’s all part of the game, Benny. Have some fun.”

“But I keep getting shot. Even by my own dad.”

“Try my method,” I urge. “Crouch and run.” I demonstrate, crouching and running down the ramp, where Ben, his gun suddenly reactivated, shoots me.

“Great method, Dad. I’ll have to try it.” And he crouches and runs away.

Twelve Minutes

I resolve to find one of those bases. My score will be really high if I find one of those bases, I think.

According to the map that the guy showed us in the little cold black room, a base should be in that far corner. I crouch and run in that general direction. Suddenly, there is Matthew, on the other side of a partition from me. I fire wildly, hitting him in the shoulder. His gun is deactivated; he tries to come around the partition to shoot me. I shoot him again. He runs the other way. Just as his gun reactivates, I shoot him again, my laser slicing through the darkness like a laser slicing through the darkness. Someone is laughing maniacally. It is me. “Die, you scum!” I scream at my firstborn son. “Die! DIE!” And I laugh maniacally again.

I turn to run away, still looking for the base. My wife is standing behind me with a strange look on her face. “Outta my way, baby,” I say, momentarily not recognizing her.

I find the base! I find the base! There it is, a little white box up on the wall. I shoot it three times. A siren goes off and then the thing lights up. This lets me know I’ve gotten bonus points. I find myself beginning to experience some degree of excitement. Perhaps Laser Tag isn’t too bad after all. I mean, there’s some strategy involved here, you know.

I run up another ramp, crouching quietly. I will surprise whoever is at the top. I will turn the tables on them.

I reach the top of the ramp and peek around the corner. Aimee is standing there with her back to me, looking down on all the peons below. A guttural, animalistic growl escapes my throat as I shoot her in the back. “That will teach you to wear a white sweater to the Laser Tag arena!” I cry as I crouch and run back down the ramp. I find myself chortling. I have never actually chortled before, but it is strangely pleasurable.

I have not yet shot my brother Eric. Where could he be? After all, he’s the one who suggested this in the first place. I will get him. . . . I must get him.

I begin a strategic sweep of the ground floor. I turn a corner. There he is! We shoot each other at the same time, except I think I shoot a little bit before him. Our guns make a strange BOOP nose, and we hear the Laser Tag guy’s voice coming over the sound system. “Please clear the Laser Tag area.”

I can’t believe it! That wasn’t twelve minutes! It was barely three! I’ve been ripped off! I check my watch.

Twelve minutes have passed.

We leave the Laser Tag area and return our equipment. Eric and I have a somewhat heated discussion regarding who shot whom, but I do not get as angry as he does, because I know he is wrong and I am right. This knowledge enables me to maintain some sense of equanimity.

We wait at the counter, out under the bright fluorescent lights, for our score to come out of the computer on little yellow pieces of paper. My thighs are beginning to ache, not being used to quite so much crouching and running. I do not know it at the time, but they will be sore for the next two days, which is a sorry commentary on my overall physical condition.

“What’d you think?” my wife asks.

I shrug. “It was okay,” I say. I hope no one notices the big ugly splotch of perspiration under each of my arms.

“Looked like you were really getting into it,” she says.

“Well, you know. I wanted to make sure the kids enjoyed it and all.”

We receive our printouts. My ranking is six out of thirteen—not too bad, I think, for the first time. Matthew has ranked higher than me, as have Eric, Weston, and Aimee. “Scores don’t matter,” I philosophize aloud, “as long as you have fun.”

“Did you have fun?” Aimee asks.

Again I shrug. “It was okay.”

Ben, who is ten, is discouraged. He scored at the bottom of the rankings. He doesn’t want to talk about it anymore, he says, so he changes the subject. He has two tokens, and he wants to spend them on the air hockey game.

“Will you play with him to cheer him up?” my wife asks. I say I will, adding sotto voce that it has to be better than Laser Tag.

Air Hockey and the End

Ben inserts his tokens, takes out the plastic disk, and hits it with his round paddle thingy. Wham-click-bang! It ricochets off the side and goes into my goal. I stand there agape.

“One to zero, Dad!” he says with a grin.

I pull it out of the goal and return it. Again it flies back across the table, faster than my eye can follow. It vanishes into my goal.

“Two to zero, Dad!”

“Ben, I can keep score. You don’t have to keep announcing it . . . so loudly,” I say somewhat peevishly.

“Sorry, Dad, I’ll stop trying so hard.”

“You try your hardest! Don’t patronize me!”

I can tell by his expression that he doesn’t know what that means but is afraid to ask.

For fear of being tedious, I will not go into great detail about the remainder of the air hockey game. Suffice it to say that the final score was seven to two.

And on the way home Cindy put her head on my shoulder and said, “It was really, really sweet of you to let Ben win at air hockey after he felt so bad about Laser Tag.”

My chest swells in the darkness. “Yeahhhh,” I reply.

Copyright 2022 by Steven Nyle Skaggs