Inverted Hedgehog

A few days ago, I participated in a small team bonding event with a few colleagues in Zagreb. We wanted to feel youthful and energetic so we decided a solid place would be an entertainment center with trampolines, arcades, and such.

Just thinking about trampolines made me feel nostalgic. Not for some nice kid’s birthday party or something, nah… It was a few of us, drunk in Rovinj going to a closed amusement park in the middle of the night and jumping over the fence right onto a 6-tile trampoline… We had infinite time only our full bladders could kill. I remember myself lying on a floaty rubbery canvas and watching the star-sprinkled night sky, knowing even then that I was happy with myself for appreciating my youth. I tore my pants just a half hour later while returning to the less-amusing side of the fence and then walked through the streets of Rovinj hoping no one will see a drunk idiot limping with a fist on his ass. But besides that… It was pretty great.

So, of course, I’ll go on a trampoline! I’m back! Sure, it’s more than 15 years later, in between I gained a lot of weight, lost a lot of weight, and went apocalyptic on my spine and glucose levels, but naaah. It is, after all, still me.

A few seconds later I was holding my back, trying to hold back tears behind a very transparent “this is fun” poorly done poker face. Even while I’m writing this I’m still feeling it – a dentist within my body, drilling phantom teeth on my lower back.

Afterward, I was playing it safe, so safe that I was close to yelling at the children that in my time arcade screens had 4 pixels, and we paid with chips, and pinballs were all the jazz.

Instead of telling them anything, we decided we should shoot them in the face! Well, not in the face since that doesn’t actually give points but it’s laser tag, you get the idea.

Me at the time being a crippled, grumpy guy wanting to get home, get a painkiller and lie down while crying myself to sleep – I expected this will be my doom. And then an employee said the best sentence he could ever hope to produce: “No running.” Oh yeah, baby. I’ve been not-running my whole life, I was born to do this.

And I was not wrong. Do you know why? Because kids really suck at doing things. Anything, really… They just stand there while you shoot them and then wait for them to respawn so you can shoot them again while laughing manically.

The main goal was to enter their base and shoot a small lamp which makes a score for your team. They didn’t even try to defend their base, a bunch of n00bs. I never felt so powerful in my life, going full John Wick on those small blue-vested bastards.

But it was also kinda cute… Kids on my team were giving me orders, they were making tactics, and more often than not – we were in sync. Outside of that arena best we could do together was me helping them do their math homework, but within it, we were brothers in arms. So, for blue vests, with no adults in the party, that was a massacre. We had more than double their points. And that’s okay… They probably didn’t even care they lost. But I care that they did.

I came fourth within my team, a solid result. But then, on the top of the list, there is someone none of us knew. A person fittingly codenamed Zenith, who scored 1/4 of our team’s points. Somewhere between us, pretty much unnoticed, there was a four feet tall god of war, a Mozart of laser tag, a kid that proved to me that even my non-running mastery was sometimes not enough.

I’m sorry I didn’t find you afterward, Zenith, but if you’re reading this (if you know how to read that is) I can tell you that you made me a better person.

May your future be bright, just like your laser was while you were blasting your way to glory.