Laser Dad

On Saturday we attended the birthday party of one of Kiernan's friends. The party was held at a local laser tag place called Ultrazone, a place that has a bunch of arcade games--witness Kiernan riding a fake motorcycle in one above--and three comically tiny rooms for pizza and cake eating, as well as a black-lit arena for laser tag matches.  We've attended birthday parties there a couple of times, and Kiernan loves it.

First the kids are shepherded into a dark room and given instructions on how to play the game by the Game Master assigned to their party. These young men and women are really, really good at their jobs. They handle kids expertly, mixing in the requisite dumb birthday party jokes with the necessary rules of the facility ("You run, you're done" for example). After this the kids are separated into teams and go into a staging area where they get their vests and unhook their laser blasters. Finally they pour into the arena and start attacking each other.

Parents are allowed to play to, although the last few rounds I've preferred to be a witness only. Something about pointing a gun, even a fake one, at my kid seemed oogy to me. Last time we were there, probably a year ago, I just wanted to shadow Kiernan as best I could anyway. He seemed so fragile then. He still does in some ways, but strapping that vest to him this time brought home in a new way how much he has grown in a year.

At Ultrazone the kids have a match, then go out to see their scores, play more arcade games, cram into the tiny rooms for pizza, play more arcade games, then cram back into the tiny rooms for cake. After that they head back into the arena for their final match. In last year's final match a bunch of dads I didn't know decided to play, huddled to the side of the little black prep room and strategized, then dominated the kids. They basically camped at the opposing bases and kept knocking them out. For my part I was just saying, "Really guys? That's what you're going to do? At a kid's party? Jerks." But the techno music was pounding far too loudly for them to hear me. And really, a bunch of jerk dads who would do that aren't gonna give a hoot what sensitive stay-at-home dad thinks.

At this party, though, I knew all the parents and a couple of them encouraged me to play. One of them, we'll call her Julie, called me a chicken. Actually did the whole chicken wing thing and made chicken noises. Right. Like that's gonna work.

It did.

I played and I loved it! I was on Kiernan's team and I had a blast. I worked with him at times, stalking through the semi-darkness and watching his back. Other times he went off on his own and I did too. There was no base-camping (I think incidents like last year caused Ultrazone to reshape its scoring so that any one player can only knock out an opposing base once). It was really cool. Our team lost, badly, but it was really cool.

At the end you check your vest's digital readout to find out your codename and head out to the arcade area to see your score. What is that you ask? What was my codename?

Punisher.

You have been warned.

No pics from inside the arena because it was too dark and camera flashes would have been annoying.




[NOTE: I doubt this will interest most of you, but I've started writing a weekly column for a video gaming site I frequent called Quarter to Three. It's the same site for which I do the weekly podcast. This column is titled "Weekly Little Big Planet" and it's basically a chance for me to talk about what I've been playing, and often--but not always--how Wendy and Kiernan feel about it. If you're interested in video games, or my writing, check it out. Be warned, though, the language there is more likely to be more adult and NSFW than it is here.]

[UPDATE: In the column that comes out this Thursday I talk a bit about the trip to Ultrazone described in this post here.]