A few years ago my extended family took a trip to Six Flags Great Adventures. We had a great time, first at the zoo, then various rides and roller coasters, and of course the soaking water canyon ride. But the best part of the day was when we played Laser-tag.

Looking at us, you wouldn't have seen a prototypical Laser-tag group. Sure, you had myself and my sister as the obvious teenaged fans. My parents and my uncle might have made you think that Laser-tag is best left to the kids. You would have been scratching your heads at the two final members: my grandparents. Nonetheless, I managed to convince everyone that not only was this a good idea, but that it would be fun too.

In the training room, we managed to align ourselves on the same team. Our opponents were a group of eight pre-teens. As my sister explained to my parents and uncle how to aim and to not get shot, Grammy worriedly asked me for advice. I told her and Pops just to stand in the base and shoot at anything that moved.

We entered the room and I escorted my grandparents to our base. Then the game was on! It started out like your typical game of Laser-tag: dark, noisy, and fog machine-smoky. My sister and I scored some quick points by attacking the target in our opponents base. Soon, we were overrun by a four-person group of the pre-teens, who constantly kept us in the shot/recharging state as they followed us like vultures. I glanced at the wall for the score and saw that we were not doing well. I applauded the pre-teens for their clustering strategy. Still, I wondered where the other four of them were...

At the end of the game, I wandered back to our base to get my grandparents. Team Freed/Landis had been outscored like few others. I asked Grammy how it had gone. She told me the other four kids were actually inside our base the whole game, and that her and Pops constantly had the lasergun against the target on one of the kids' backs. She also said "I kept yelling at them: 'Get out of my house!'" I thought I'd never hear anything funnier related to Laser-tag!

After the game, the Laser-tag operators hand out paper strips with individual scores on them. I collected my below-average score and noted that the pre-teens were getting mostly Ace ratings. Grammy's score card had two more surprises: a mind-boggling 97.5% accuracy score, and a rating of Top Gun!