Getting Out

Today I went to an escape room with a few friends. This is an adult adventure, the opportunity to enter a mystery and try to get out. A dry run of survival, designed for people who are so bored with the boredom of everyday life that they are willing to pay money for others to lock them in a room that is hard to leave. The idea is that the players are faced with a bunch of tasks  and when they solve these problems, they get out. There’s only one hour of time.

Escape rooms are a fairly new invention, but people throughout the times have tried to create excitement into their drab lives by coming up with exciting games. The Romans had the gladiators, the Victorians had duels and we’ve got Bruce Willis and bungee jumping.

Humans are built for adrenaline surges and if you don’t get them the natural way, you have to device ways of getting them. There are so many movies built around this concept. I recently watched The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, which describes a man with an extremely boring life who starts doing all kinds of exciting things to win over a lady (what else). He succeeds. A lot of the stuff he does is stupid and could easily have got him killed in real life, but there is something wonderful to it. The thought: “Wouldn’t that be something else? Something real? Stories for grand-children!”

But I for one don’t want to get myself killed so I have to settle for safe alternatives, such as escaping games or movies. Situations where you can imagine danger and conflict without actually entering in it.

We didn’t make it out in time, I regret to say, but I did have a very fun night. Enough excitement to last me a few weeks?