My Night at Laser Tag. By Katy Lee. Grade Prep and Beyond.

I had a fantasically good day on Friday.

It all started from a very funny, slightly filthy late night facebook chat between Joel Mc and me which ended with us making a plan to hang out and friday.The plan was pretty much this:

--put Joel’s resume in at a store.

--get coffee

--check out girls.

So after a lovely morning of fun and awesome with Brendan, Joel came to pick me up and we started our Friday Plan.

We delivered resumes and talked to my boy for a while and I bought two lovely new cardigans which made me very happy.

We made a stop at Centrelink and it poured rain outside while we went and got a hot coffee and something to eat at Hudson’s. Saw Tom N. and he came inside and said hi and shook Joel’s hand and ate some of my scone and went on his way.

We looked in cash converters and I saw some video players and I liked them.

We then decided to go and play laser tag – which Joel loved and I had heard much of, but never played. We saw Liam closing the café and told him of our plan and he decided he would join in on the laser tag fun as well.

Joel and I drove to his place to get cashed up and we texted Sean to see if he wanted to play too.

He did.

We picked him up and the three of us went to maccas. The boys ate burgers and things and I ate salty chips and a little drink.

We went to meet Liam (with newly cut hair) at the Wine Bank where we had a few drinks and funny conversations. We made a detour past Liam’s house (the house of Got Girl) to watch his newest movie and then we drove out to the House of Laser Tag.

According to the boys, it’s the place to be if you are a teenager. You get drunk and then hang out at The Zone.I thought that was a little trashy until I recalled the year 11-13, and the playground visits.

As it was Friday night, we opted for “four hour Friday” - which means you can play mini-golf, laser tag and go skating as much as you want till 11pm.

To begin with, we played a very funny game of mini-golf. (I had clearly blocked out how badly I sucked at the game)

Because of all the rain, there were some interesting puddles to contend with and I managed to slip over on the astro-turf (because I am a klutz and my shoes had no grip) and land on my arse.

Straight into a puddle.

At one hole, there was a massive puddle of water and the boys stood on the bricks, out of the water to hit the ball.

I opted for standing fair in the middle of it – as my shoes were already saturated from the very gracefully slide into the puddle.It was a little more damp than I would have liked.

Needless to say, I lost, pretty hardcore, at minigolf.

It was then time for the much talked of laser tag.

We stood in the line for about 25 minutes and then got to go in.

So to begin with, I grabbed a vest and a laser-gun and I couldn’t get the vest around my boobs – shocking as that may seem. (What I didn’t realise is that they adjusted on the sides, really easily) so I went and found the laser tag girl and she fitted me into my vest – like a personal dresser.

So by the time I was sorted, vest-wise, not only was it already very very dark, with crazy music blaring, but not one single person in sight.

I will admit that this little laser-tag virgin felt slightly terrified.

If you get shot by someone, you’re out of the game for 8 seconds.

I’m pretty sure I was in the game all up for about 4 minutes.

I may have shot one person.

Through a complete fluke.

I wandered around, very bewildered in the maze of halls coloured lights tried to navigate my way through the hallways and barrels in the dim light – I will admit that several times I glanced to my right trying to see my map in the corner of my computer screen…and then I would realise that it obviously wouldn’t be there, as I am not a computer game.

At the end of fifteen minutes (which to a very confused-and-sucky-at-laser-tag-girl felt like a helluva lot longer) all the lights came on again and a voice told us to exit the area.

Now, I am pretty much the worst navigator in history (in real life, or in computer games)

I am not great at video games at the best of times, but I am completely screwed when they don’t have some kind of map to tell me where to go.

(and god help me if I am in an area with lots of doors and hallways – it will always take me at least an hour to get out if there’s no map)

So, using this information and the fact that laser tag is played in room full of walls and doors and arrows that don’t point to the exit at all, you can probably imagine how I went, at getting out of there.

That’s right people – not only could I not shoot people in there – I couldn’t exit the freaking room.

I wandered around, feeling incredibly embarrassed and slightly frightened, imagining that some kind of laser-tag-fire-alarm would sound and I would be led, mortified from the premises.

Or that the boys would have to send the laser tag girl in to locate me, and I would be found in a corner with my phaser, rocking back and forth, repeating, “there’s no way out, there’s no way out.”

It didn’t happen.

After several wrong turns, and trust in arrows that didn’t point to the exit, I found my way outside.

We lined up again and I felt disappointed that I had failed so thoroughly at laser-tag, but determined at least to do up my own vest and not get lost.

I felt some rather awesome surges of adrenalin when I shot a few small children, and when I was standing with my back pressed to the wall, trying to hide from other laser-guns or when I peered around corners and found my self face to face with Joel – whose eyes get pretty insane in a game of laser tag.

At the end of this round (which felt so very short) I unclipped my vest and found my way outside - with a pretty tragic score, but a high level of excitement and intense desire to play again.

Which we did.

I got a little better each time – admittedly, still with an abysmal number of points, that would make the Army - or Brendan - cry for me, but with a not-half-bad accuracy level. (which I’m pretty sure I must have achieved by not trying to hit as many people as I should have. )

Funniest moment of the evening:

The little girl, half my height, bumping into me in a hallway and standing there for at least 30 seconds while she omitted a high pitched squeal, with the gun pointed at my chest.

I said “Bang!” and shot her and ran away.

After laser tag, it was a trip to Coles for an impromptu hunt for weirdly named chips and giant chocolate dollar coins and then on to the Wine Bank for a last drink.

Moral to the story: Laser Tag is freaking awesome and if a kid shoots you, hide around the corner for eight seconds and then get the fucker.

And then wait eight more seconds til his chest lights up and get him again

Thank you very much.

Stage and Craft

After far too many hours of cleaning and scrubbing everything, with much help from Lizzie and Christi, There are still some things that we need to fix up, and we still have an assortment of boxes to unpack but Brendan and I are getting settled quite nicely into our new, old house. In a month, Brendan and I will have been married for a whole year. How nutty is that? “Kenya believe it?” It has absolutely flown by.
 

I am loving being back in Bendigo. There is just something about this town that I really love, and hanging out with Christi again has been just great. We have been friends for about ten years now, how bizarre is that?
 I still feel like we are in high school half the time and its hard to believe we have known each other for such a long time. She has been great about including me when she does things with Tegan and stuff, (U-paint! Awesome- upaint is a little store where you can go, have a coffee and paint the crap out of very random ceramic figurines or jugs or things, they go from about two dollars up to…a zillion, for different sized things. Very childlike activity – except with more caffeine involved) She also bought me the cutest earrings, from...etsy? where they on etsy? they are like cameo earrings, but llamas. yes!

 

Christi and I have been having a “Craft Day” every Thursday for the last few months, and it has been so much fun. We have done felting – making scarves and very funny hats, made leather bracelet things (mine sporting a black llama on a magenta background), we sewed needle books, to hold needles and pins (mine sporting an appliqué llama.) We melted old records in the oven to mould them into funky shaped bowls, and we made collages out of playboy and wedding magazines and scraps of material and other odds and ends.

Collage in the process. So much mess. So much fun!

Tally Ho! A finished Collage.

This week just gone, we made “cold cream porcelain” out of an assortment of ingredients that really should not go together. With that, we made creepy sea creature women – I attempted a giant breasted squid woman (inspired, unashamedly by Ursula from The Little Mermaid) and Crispy made a very cool, terrifying brood mother, with six breasts and a large gaping mouth…and a fish tail.

 

I was very brave and auditioned for one of the theatre company’s productions, and I got in, as one of the principal characters. We have only had three rehearsals so far, but it is already so much fun I can’t believe it.

It’s so very different, I feel very out of my comfort zone, because I don’t know anyone at all in the show – which also means I have no pre-conceived notions about anyone in the cast at all. 

I am learning things about the various people as rehearsals progress, but I only have my own feelings to go on at this point. 

I also don’t know what anyone in the cast or crew are capable of yet, which is very new to me.

I am so used to seeing people and going, yep, I know that they can do that, I’ve heard them a hundred times, or knowing exactly who is new to the company, and who has been around for years, because I spent so much of my life growing up, at the Bakehouse. 

Nevertheless, even though it is kind of scary and at times very bewildering, I am loving it. I am really excited about the show – about getting to know the people and about the performing (and getting to wear a cool fifties dress – thank you Lisa, hehe)

Brendan is on two weeks holidays at the moment and so is Durston (Brendan’s hetero-life-partner) so the two of them spent much of last week playing video games and drinking their weight in alcohol. They are very funny boys. I drifted between feeling like a den mother, or a little sister at times during the great Game Play of Spring Break, and also regressing to high school Katy, but it was very cool to play with the boys, and I did like looking after them, to some extent, and know Bren loved having his boy here.

Elise moved to Geelong to go to Uni yesterday, so on Friday we went to Shepparton, to have a family dinner at Corrie as a farewell type thing. I predict that Elise will be queen of the campus in about a week.

Lizzie is in full swing Festival-Queen now – not sleeping a lot, and working like a crazy person to get the Festival ready. It will be fantastic, of course, but I miss Lizzie when she becomes Festival Lizzie - her usually over-active mind starts running even faster than usual and she gets frazzled easily. She is so strong and so capable, but I do worry that she will burn herself out with this festival.