Just like the last time I checked, this all happened exactly in this order.
I'm a pretty meticulous guy I would say, though having a mild deficit with attention, I'm good at justifying mostly everything I see (aside from the one or two card tricks that use coins and markers rather than sleight of hand). I usually am the buzz kill to any fun sounding group of people. It's pretty easy, that is, to kill the buzz. I can't help but point out the real producer of that electronic song to someone who absolutely loves the drop, or explain how many people were able to fit into such a tiny box, or how that blade was sharp enough to cut a melon but couldn't stab a banana.
You get the idea, I ruin the meaning of fun. Under normal circumstances almost nothing scares me, logically speaking, if you understand how something works that's the best way of overcoming it. That's how you fight disease.
One of my favourite ways to spend my hot-brain time is solving problems. Logical problems are my favourite, with the solution making you feel satisfied. Emotional problems, not so much my favourite. They are difficult in every sense of the word. This is why I keep a very small list of close friends really close to my life, as they tend to help me solve those elusive issues that I can never seem to think my way out of.
Sometimes they would try to get more involved with me by asking me for a game of chess or to help them with fixing something on their computer. I admire them for their effort, I really do, but I know I just can't appreciate it as much as they'd hope.
It was right before my birthday when one of them asked me if I knew about "escape rooms" and if I was interested in them. I immediately looked it up on the internet, and to my surprise, it was exactly the kind of thing I'd consider "fun". According to multiple websites, I quickly learned that it's a simple game. You are blindfolded and placed in a room, upon removing the blindfolds you have 60 minutes to solve a series of riddles and puzzles to physically escape the room as access to the exit is completely shut off until you reach the end. Wow.
Just the right amount of safe danger awareness and critical thinking needed to get through it all. Escape rooms are the new "in" thing when it comes to entertainment. It becomes "fun" when you play with 3 or more other humans (don't worry they give you an emergency escape key just in case you have to use the washrooms or need to leave, but you're not allowed to take any devices in with you).
Now, my city has had a surge of brand new escape rooms since the fad started and new ones crop up every couple of months. I've pretty much tried all the popular and unknown escape rooms in the entire city as I like to rate them for others to enjoy and gauge which ones are worth the money. They cost quite a bit per person as well as most places being booked by parties of the usual 3 or 5, so it helps to know the right places especially when introducing someone knew.
You could imagine the eventual dull expression on all of my closest friends faces when I call them up and scream about a brand new escape room opening up just so we could all go and try it. After about the 15th or 16th escape room, you could tell they were getting more and more annoyed as they spend most of their time in the rooms just looking around at the objects or walls and reading the lore rather than being productive. Mind you, I would never penalise them for being unhelpful if they were. Everyone has their bad days. Also, some of the rooms require more than 3 humans in a party, so there's that too.
The other day I got an e-mail from an escape room owner asking me to check out their newly opened escape room right on the outskirts of my city, and if I could review it for them. They said if I came in during the grand opening I'd get 15 bucks off. Since that was pretty much 50% off the total price (minus the couple dollars off for checking in with their Facebook group or whatever) I figured that was the best price I could ever get. I emailed them back saying if the three other humans I had would get the same deal if I brought them, they replied with a disheartened "No, sorry." dryish response.
I didn't care I was going to bring them anyway, even if it meant paying for them. I just needed to see what was so great about this place since the owner contacted me himself. Without there being a single review of it online, it kind of excited me. I was starting to be somewhat of a drone sailing through every escape room that pops up. My eye is always open for a room that would raise the bar.
I just had to go...
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