Showing Up Is Half The Battle

I've told this to my pageant girls for years, but I've never seen it proven so clearly (and irritatingly so) as last night when my three man team showed up for a little local tournament only to find ourselves the only ones there. Unbelievable. Technically another group of three showed up fifteen minutes after the tourney was supposed to start, but at that point with a whopping two teams...cancelled. Sheesh. But to my point, we showed up. So thanks to the guys who were on board, reliable and ready to do this laser tag event with me...and then be good sports about the distance we had to drive just to find we wouldn't have a competition after all.

Yeah, I took a selfie of our would-be team. Don't know what we would have called ourselves. In an attempt to organically develop a team name using all our initials we independently threw out some words mad libs style and this group would have likely been either Team Tantalizing Lemonade by the Sea or Team Speaking of Legendary Tables. :)

Well, regardless of my frustration with this in general (and timing...this probably has to do in part with it being spring break week) I do want to thank Beanz for trying to get something going here. Effort is being made to get activity going and I really hope the people who play at this center can see and appreciate that. And once we were there other things kicked in which allowed us to play, albeit quite differently than expected.

First off, the three of us went in just for a free for all against each other. I've got to say, that was just plain fun for the sake of fun. I need that in my laser tag. :) Just running around and shooting with friends is cathartic and worthwhile. Then the tone changed a bit as a children's birthday party showed up (with REALLY little kids). And a few other kids on break arrived just for public play, which apparently they would have alternated against the tournament games. First off, no, we did not come to play against kids or be big meanies, but once they were there we all turned into mentors of sort. We went in with them, showed them how to get bases, took a few of them around in groups and helped them when they got scared or confused. In one game where the groups blended Tyler played the round out and then told a mom with a more tentative child to tell the little girl the name on his pack was hers. That little girl beamed with joy and was so excited as she believed her name was near the top. And there were a couple other nice teaching moments and fun with the unexpected infusion of kids and a couple of the parents who joined in. OK, this was NOT the night I expected, but I will say it felt good to be youthful and just have fun and see the kids enjoying laser tag. And the frustration over the lack of having a tournament is tempered because I knew there was another one (a fundraiser being put together by an outside group) happening the next day, so we will return ready to rock. :)

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Contact: tivia@tiviachickloveslasertag.com
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