A friend of mine had a birthday recently and invited some people and I to go bowling in Staten Island to celebrate. The day eventually ended past 4am after too many pitchers of beer, two mini carafes of sake and a couple lost hours in a private room at a karaoke bar in the Lower East Side, but the day started much earlier and innocently enough at a bowling alley with 12 people I mostly barely knew.
Either because of the size of our party or because of the Kiwanis club fundraiser that reserved a full half of the bowling alley probably weeks before, we were assigned lanes in the black-lit Cosmic Bowling half of the building. The Cosmic Bowling section, if you’ve never been, is where they dim the lights and pulse crude laser shapes on birthday party bumper bowlers and, apparently, where they rack the oddly-weighted, over-oiled and chipped house balls. There was also this weird room next the snack bar behind our lane for something called Lazer Maze. I didn’t know what Lazer Maze was, but I decided it had to be the copywritten name for a laser tag franchise, so I tried to stir interest in getting a decent sized game going. It probably wouldn’t be as fun as we remembered laser tag being when we were 12, but we were already attending a birthday party for an adult at a bowling alley at 2pm on a Saturday afternoon, so I figured we may as well have gone all-out to make complete fools of ourselves instead of stopping half way. Unfortunately, I couldn’t convince enough people to pay $12/person to get a game going so the idea was abandoned.
Still: Lazer Maze. Whatever it actually was, could it have been as sweet as it sounded? I got a chance to find out when three kids from a party on a lane near ours ran up to the rental counter as I was returning my bowling shoes. Since I wanted to find out how Lazer Maze is different from laser tag and they seemed open to it, I decided to talk to them.
Me: How did you guys bowl?
Them: Awesome!
Me: Cool. You guys look like pretty good bowlers.
Them: Yeah, real good.
Me: Did you do the Lazer Maze?
Them: Yeah, it was awesome!
Me: I thought it’d be awesome. What is Lazer Maze anyway?
Them: It’s just like in the movies!
Me: Just like in the movies? Like, which movie? And how?
Them: I don’t know. It’s just like in the movies!
Me: Like, in “Mission Impossible” when Tom Cruise gets lowered from the ceiling and has to dodge lasers so he can break into a safe or whatever it was?
Them: I don’t know that one. Lazer Maze is like… you’re in a room and, like, a hundred different laser beams shine from wall to wall and you have to crawl and jump because you can’t touch the lasers. And you go for as long as you don’t cross through a laser beam.
Me: Is there a maze or an obstacle course you have to run through?
Them: No.
Me: Do you guys have guns while you dodge lasers?
Them: No.
Me: Can you do it with a bunch of people at once?
Them: No, but your friends can watch you on a TV screen outside.
Me: That’s not what I thought Lazer Maze was going to be like. I guess it’s not like laser tag at all. Is it fun though?
Them: It’s just like in the movies!
I thought it was strange and also pretty much hilarious that they kept saying Lazer Maze was “just like in the movies” and wondered where they picked up on the saying. I traded in my bowling shoes and turned around to walk back to my group at the lane. That’s when I saw a sign with big block letters on an easel that read, “LAZER MAZE: Just Like In the Movies!”
I guess I got it wrong and the kids were totally right. Lazer Maze isn’t like laser tag at all. In fact, I have it on good authority that Lazer Maze is way better: it’s just like in the movies.
Tags: Birthday Cone Hat
