There are so many things I could and should write about celebrating Christmas in Madison with Dad, Sonja, and the whole crew from Decorah. . . Fun and delight with Aidan, Anna and Kaj, who are just wonderful to be with – a chance to catch up with Nathan after way too long – two sumptous meals lovingly prepared by Sonja- watching the Packers beat the Lions (actually, I “overheard” them beating the Lions because I was busy playing Pictionary) and just relaxing the way you only can with family. It was a really wonderful time and not very rushed either. (Although Kathy and I had to cut things short Saturday night around 10 as the gift opening finished. We were so zonked from the long day we had endured, between the funeral that morning and the long, arduous drive through rain and fog. But boy, there could not have been a better way to finish such a day than with that fun-loving tribe.)
But what I have to blog about most specifically is the last thing we did together Sunday before the Iowans and Racinians had to head home. Sonja’s grandson (I believe) and his boy scout troop (I think) had recently entertained themselves at a Laser Tag place in Madison, and Sunday was Adults Play For Free day. We had also talked about heading to the movie theater, with the adults going to see “Doubt” while the kids would see “Bunnies Blow Up Brooklyn” (I’m a little shaky on the specifics here.) You can probably guess which plan was more appealing to me. But the Laser Tag option carried the day, and Kathy and I went along with it because that’s what Aunts and Uncles do. (And parents and grandparents as well, come to think of it.) You skip seeing “Doubt” so you can play Candyland for the 500th time . . . and you do so joyously.
Well, until we started playing it, I was pretty sure that the highlight of the outing would be the bag of Wheat Thins Toasted Chips – Veggie flavored – which I got from the vending machine as we waited our turn. But it turned out to be a lot more fun than either Kathy or I ever imagined it could be. When our appointed time came – 4:15 – we were herded into a small room with all of the other participants for orientation. There were 28 people all together, including the 9 Bergs, Spencer-Bergs and Keesey-Bergs. . . and since this is played in three teams, it worked out neatly for the nine of us to be one team – and since most of the other people playing were young grizzled veterans of the game, it was like the U.S. vs. China vs. Luxembourg in there. Once the game begins, you are running through something that sort of resembles a circus fun house, with ramps and stairs and mirrors – under black light – shooting at people with a laser gun that’s attached to you with a harness. But while you’re shooting at others, they’re shooting at you – and when they hit one of the lights on your harness, your lights go out for a few seconds before you can resume. The Bergs were pretty hopeless in there, clumping together and trying to look more formidable than foolish, with only fleeting, infrequent success. I am still trying to get used to the image of my dad and his wife Sonja, two of the most peace-loving, tree-hugging, progressive-thinking people on the planet, running around shooting people – even if it was with a laser gun shooting out nothing more than beams of light. It was the weirdest sight- like watching Mother Theresa mud wrestle or Gandhi get into a bar fight. But this was about stepping outside of one’s comfort zone, and what made it bearable to do so is that all of us were operating in the dark (in more ways than one) and just giving it a try – – – even me! And even Kathy! And at the end, you receive a score according to how many opponents you hit versus how many times you yourself were hit. And because each of us is arbitrarily assigned a playing name (sort of like we were all professional wrestlers) when our scores are posted on a screen in the lobby, it’s not quite as humiliating as it would otherwise be.
And the team results? The red team won with 95.530 points. Yellow came in second with 70,564 points. And blue finished third with 33,610. Actually, considering the fact that two of our players were younger than ten years old – another was seventy-six years old – and most of the rest of us were hopeless klutzes – we didn’t do as horrifically as we might have. Of course, I should talk- I shot 7 people while being shot 70 . . . sort of an interesting addendum to the words of Jesus calling for us to forgive others not 7 times but 70 times 7. And my name? Assassin! A misnomer if there ever was one. Fortunately, Matt was in there swinging and managed to finish 11th out of the 28, which helped make up some ground for our team, which should have been nicknamed the Blue Bunnies or the Blue Blossoms since that’s about as fierce as we managed to be. But that’s okay- we do other things well.
pictured above: Sonja being extricated from her harness and laser gun at the end of the game.