Oh yeah, I'm gettin' Mom of the Year for this one. Two weeks ago it was my daughter's 13th birthday. She had asked to take a few of her friends to play laser tag for her birthday, which we had agreed to. We would need to take both our cars to get them all there, but we didn't mind. I had never been but my daughter has been with friends before and loves it. It wasn't a problem until my father-in-law had to have emergency open heart surgery and my husband had to fly to FL a few days before the scheduled laser tag. Her friends had already responded to invites so I couldn't change it...no, I roped my Mom into helping me drive them there. The laser tag place is located in a city not familiar to us but we found the building OK...it looked like a huge, run down mill-type building. When we entered we noticed a man standing at the elevator on his cell phone - he told us he couldn't get the elevator to work...he kept getting on and the door would close, but it wouldn't move up or down so he was calling one of the businesses in the building to see what was going on. You have to understand, the inside of the building looked like it hadn't seen a makeover...ever...not since it was built...and the elevator was small...very, very small. My mother and I are claustrophobic so we both said "let's just take the stairs"...easy solution, right? No can do..the door to the stairs only opens from the inside. The elevator worked for a group of boys we let cut us so we could see if they plummeted to their death instead of us...I tried really hard not to show any fear...my poor Mother, however, wore fear like a badge of honor...she wasn't going to get on the elevator but I pulled her in at the last minute. We were 9 people squished in a small elevator that was chugging slowly towards the 4th floor when one of Jamie's friends jumped up high and came crashing down...because she thought it would be funny....we could all feel the elevator temporarily stop when she jumped and I thought I was going to pass out...the fear inside me took over and shrieked for her to please not do that again! We were all quite happy to make it to the 4th floor. The place is filled with a multitude of extremely loud games that kids can spend money on while waiting for their turn to play laser tag...when I say loud, I think my Mom and I had two totally different conversations even though we were talking to each other...When we went to leave, there was a line for the rickety elevator so it was an easy decision to take the stairs down and avoid the Elevator of Doom.
