COLUMN: Laser tag not just for 14 year olds
I hope you all had a wonderful Easter weekend. I know I sure did.
I also know that some of you are thinking, “Boy I sure hope this Steve guy doesn’t force us to read another account of what he did when he wasn’t trying to get his necromancer to level 20,” but I’m a lot like a fourth grade teacher in that I don’t care what you say and I think everyone should know their times tables up through the 12s.
My weekend was great for two reasons.
One: I just found out the new “Star Wars” will be rated PG-13, meaning a lot of people are going to die. So far I figure it’ll be Mace Windu, Count Dooku and, if the begging and pleading of the loyal fan base mean anything to anybody, Jar Jar Binks, twice.
Two: I was introduced to a concept that will change my life more than anything since the jump from Nintendo to Super Nintendo. I am talking about laser tag.
Now, I guess I shouldn’t say I was introduced to laser tag. I still vaguely remember the original laser tag, which was either a Saturday morning cartoon or a series of elaborate commercials to advertise a laser tag game that was sold in the late ’80s.
I clearly remember wanting a laser tag game but my parents were wise enough to realize that it would have been a big waste of money considering I had no friends to play with so I would have just ended up committing laser-suicide over and over.
I did actually play ’80s laser tag once with some of the neighborhood kids, but they all put tape over their sensors so I couldn’t shoot them, and than proceeded to laser massacre me. If I remember correctly, after the game they said that there was a rule that clearly gives the winner the right to give the loser a nasty wedgie.
Like the rest of the world, since the ’80s laser tag has gotten a lot smaller, sleeker and makes much more sense. I went with my brother and our cousins to a laser tag arena in Ogden. The kid led us all into a black maze that looked like some one ate a bunch of Day-Glo paints and than got really sick from it and let us go nuts. We than proceeded to go nuts.
If you’ve never played laser tag, I highly recommend it. It’s like being in a video game. You get to run around shooting people, if you die you just have to go back to where you started to try again and you usually get your butt handed to you by 14 year olds. About the only difference is that no one uses those clever abbreviations (probably because WTF is actually longer to say that what it stands for).
I should probably out a disclaimer about that last statement. Some people run around and shoot people. Others run for about a minute than get lost in the maze. And others don’t even last that long before the bend other an start sucking wind because they’re in the worst shape that they’ve been in since infancy. I won’t say which group I was in, but if you see me try to run anywhere on campus you’ll be able to figure it out.
I had a lot of fun shooting my family members, but what made the night double awesome was when our game was joined a couple of kids about the age I was when I first played. I saw it figuratively as a chance to face me childhood demons head on in honorable combat.
I shot those brats in the back every chance I got. Their tears did nothing to slow my laser assaults. It may have been the greatest victory in my life.
When we were done I felt bad about giving them wedgies but hey, rules are rules.
Laser tag changed my life. Now I realized that there ways to solve your problems with guns. And to think, I wasted all this time on talking them out.
Geek on.
Steve Shinney is a junior in computer science and currently has a 50 percent win average in playing foursquare against second graders. Comments can be sent to steveshinney@cc.usu.edu.