Zombie Bait

So has everyone heard of the escape the room concept? Where you pay money to be locked in a room and then have sixty minutes to figure out how to unlock the door?

Yes, it's a real thing.

No, we weren't swindled.

In fact, we went so far as to pay to be locked in a room with a zombie. 

Six of our good friends joined us for the fun, and were terrorized by a fantastic actor decked out in zombie makeup chained to a wall as we scrambled around a room looking for clues. Every five minutes a buzzer would sound and his chains would lengthen, until he could reach every corner of the room and had to be "distracted" by loud shakers. And if that wasn't enough, every so often the lights would go out completely and we would have to clap together to get them to go back on.

We highly recommend it.

Not only was it a lot of fun, but it brings out your true selves in ways only sheer terror can.

I, for example, am a screamer. A screamer. My good friend Suzanne who has known me since the beginning of law school told me afterwards how surprised she was to find that out.

To help the self-discovery along, the Trapped in a Room with a Zombie team has come up with classifications for the participants based on their impartial observations. I had four: I was an Identifier (as in, of clues), an Indiana Jones (physical, opening things and actively working to figure out the puzzle), a Leader, and the Jumper (goes hand-in-hand with the screaming, jumping out of the zombie's way).

Ken was also an Identifier, a Collaborator, and the Outside-the-box-Thinker. He also earned special mention because he did something they had never seen before: he abandoned his team! Ken, being Ken, identified the only way to win (the box with the key inside, which was padlocked shut) and held on to that key for pretty much the entire sixty minutes. Near the end there was some confusion and most of us were still working on some puzzles even though we already had the combination to get the key and, consequently, escape the room. So Ken took it upon himself to unlock the key, unlock the door, and LEAVE without notifying ANYONE ELSE. At which point the zombie took up watch right inside the door.

Obviously we all made it out, but our friend Nate summed up the experience quite succinctly in one observation: "Geez, Ken, even in games like this you still find a way to win."

So I guess the moral of the story is that Ken and I are not a great team for the zombie apocalypse. Ken will most likely abandon me (with perfectly rational reasons as to why it had to be done) and my shrieks will lead the zombies right to me and my early demise.




PS: After having Ken proof read the post, he very seriously added "That's probably the reason I would leave. Plus, I left you all the key. I could have taken it with me."