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What we think about when we’re shooting laser guns at people

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I took Thing 1 (the 10-year-old) to play laser tag over the weekend.

If you’ve never played, you’re given a laser gun that’s tethered to a vest covered with sensors. You have 15 minutes to chase each other through a maze. When you’re hit, your pistol and sensors stop working for a few seconds, so both players can escape.

We played 2 rounds. The first was just us, but before the second game started, the attendant came in and told us we’d be playing with a cherubic little boy I’ll call Pugsley. I’m guessing he was maybe 10.

So, the game starts.

We all head off to find a hiding place from which to shoot each other. I see Thing 1 hiding behind a wall. I sneak up and shoot her in the back. She chases me and, and as soon as her laser gun is back online, she shoots me. (We really are a loving family. Seriously.)

Thing 1 and I are having a great time, zapping each other, and I realize I haven’t seen Pugley. I think, if that was my kid, I’d want him to feel included. I’d want him to have fun, too. So, I go looking for him.

I find him. He’s found a hiding place in the back of the maze, and when Thing 1 runs by, he jumps out, fires his laser gun and screams:

“GET OUT OF MY HOUSE!”

I thought, Whoa, did he just say….

He shoots me.

“GET OUT OF MY HOUSE!”

Now, I have a confession to make. Whenever I take Thing 1 to play laser tag, it’s like I’m a kid again playing “Star Wars” or something. On the drive home, I asked my daughter what she thinks about. She’s really competitive. With her, there’s no role playing. She just wants to win.

I can picture kids today playing soldier, but I was surprised and a little depressed to learn that any little boy would fantasize about fending off a home invasion.

I think, maybe I’m reading too much into it. Maybe I’m projecting my anxieties about crime and violence onto Pugsley. Maybe his little fantasy about defending his home against a home invasion is as innocent as that scene in “A Christmas Story” where Ralphie dreams of being a cowboy and shooting burglars.

Thing 1, meanwhile, decides she’s had enough of Pugsley’s hide-and-shoot strategy. She ducks behind a wall and waits, and as soon as he peeks out, she shoots him. Over and over again.

Pugley’s pinned down. I feel sorry for him — partly because I still think his little home-invasion fantasy is kind of sad, but also because Thing 1 is showing him no mercy. I imagine how I’d feel if Thing 1 was playing with another family and kept getting shot by an older kid.

I ask Thing 1 to give him a break. She won’t, so  I start shooting her, just to disable her gun and give Pugsley a chance to run, but then Pugsley screams something else:

“I CAN’T BELIEVE I KEEP GETTING SHOT BY A GIRL!”

Now, I understand he’s a child and that he’s just echoing the attitudes he’s learned at home or at school, but when he disses Thing 1 for being a girl, I think, Well, Pugsley, I guess you’re on your own.

I let them play and don’t interfere.

When the game is over, we check our scores. Thing 1 had annihilated him (and me, too).

On our way out of the arena, Pugsley says, “That was fun!”

Glad to hear it.

You gotta love old amusement parks

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Every summer, when we visit my parents in eastern Kentucky, we take the kids to Camden Park.

Camden Park’s a neat old amusement park in Huntington, West Virginia,  a few miles from the Kentucky line and across the river from Ohio.

It started as a trolley park over 100 years ago, a picnic area along the Camden Interstate Railway. Some of its rides have been around since the Eisenhower administration and look it, too, but that’s part of what makes it great.

Out of habit, my wife calls it a theme park (we used to live in Orlando), but there’s a big difference between a theme park and a place like Camden Park.

For starters, there’s no theme, nothing tying the place together, no attempt at storytelling.

Camden Park’s roller coaster is just a coaster. It isn’t a rocket ship or a fighter jet.

Camden Park’s coaster, the Big Dipper, is made of wood, not steel, and it’s scary enough without a back story — not because it’s especially fast (because it isn’t), but because it opened in 1958 and looks like it could collapse at any moment.

Of course, that’s how it looked when I was a kid, and it’s still standing. It’s a lot sturdier than it looks.

You don’t have to stand in long lines to ride the rides at Camden Park, either.

Lord knows how long you’d have to wait to ride Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey at Islands of Adventure, but you’ll wait 5, maybe 10 minutes to ride the Tilt-a-Whirl at Camden Park. The line would be even shorter if the operator didn’t give everyone a good, long ride.

Something else I love about old amusement parks is that the rides are simple.

Disney’s Haunted Mansion is this elaborate special effects show, but Camden Park’s Haunted House is a twisty little ride powered by gravity, black lights and what could be props from the Halloween store in the old strip mall.

Everything about Camden Park’s Haunted House is low tech, including the brakes. When the ride’s over and you turn that final corner and come outside, your car, which probably weighs 500, 600 pounds, is stopped by hand.

You can’t go home again (unless you promise to fix the computer)

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Image by Danial*1977 via Flickr

We’re going to visit my parents in a couple weeks, and I already know what’s going to happen:

While Thing 1 is off reading and Thing 2 is wrestling Papaw, I’ll be fixing my parents’ computer.

I used to fix my in-laws computer, too, but they found “a guy.”

My parents don’t have “a guy.” They’ve got me, and I’m 7 hours away.

When something goes wrong, they’ll get by as best they can until we get there and I can take a look at it.

I try to offer them tech support over the phone, and Dad tries to follow, he really does, but it’s hopeless.

ME: OK, click “Start,” and then click “All Programs.”

DAD: OK.

ME: OK, now look for….

DAD: Wait. Where’s “Start”?

ME: It’s on your screen, bottom left. It’s not on the keyboard. It’s on your screen. It’s a big button that says, “Start.”

DAD: I don’t have that.

ME: You don’t have it?

DAD: No. Where is it?

In all fairness, my parents do a pretty good job of maintaining their machine — at least they have since I fixed it a couple years ago.

The problem then was malware. They’d let their anti-virus subscription lapse, and they were clicking every link their friends forwarded to them. That PC had more viruses than a kindergarten class in the middle of winter.

I spent several hours removing viruses and installing anti-virus updates, and when I’d finished, I called my parents into their home office (my old bedroom) and explained what I’d done and warned them against clicking strange links.

“Oh,” Mom said. “Well, we didn’t know. (Pause.) Hey, let me show you this website Polly sent me where you can play old songs from the ’50’s!”

Click!

I explained that was exactly the kind of no-name website I’d just warned them about, and I have to say, they listened. They’re getting their oldies these days from Pandora and their classic country from WSM in Nashville. That was 2 years ago, and until just recently, Dad would still make a point sometimes of telling me how well their computer was working.

Lately, though, it’s been acting up again. I did some troubleshooting over the phone over a period of several days, and it sounds like their hard drive is full — they’ve got a 30 GB hard drive and about 200 MB free, according to Dad — so that should be easy enough to fix.

I’ll sit with my parents and we’ll uninstall any unnecessary programs and delete old emails with big attachments — the same folks who like to forward links to suspicious websites like to forward pictures of their kids and grandkids, too — and we’ll probably go to Walmart to get a cheap external drive, for backup as well as extra storage.

With any luck, their machine will stay fixed — at least until we go up for Thanksgiving.