the game

I got invited out with some people I didn't know very well and so was kind of tagging along. we entered a big building, and I had no idea whether it was a club or a party or a show. we sat waiting in an anteroom with some strangers, and I thought maybe restaurant-- but then it started. it was a big interactive game that ranged throughout the rooms-- we were given scenarios and then had to act, quickly, in response to them-- everyone else seemed much more adept at this than I was. at one point during a dress-up bit, I tried to cut loose, see if I could really get into it, was twirling a belt around over my head and hoo-ing in character-- but then the buckle hit something and clanged, and I stopped and felt, in retrospect, that it had been in poor taste and not particularly ingenious. I just wasn't getting the game, and it was incredibly embarrassing and frustrating.

and then when it ended we all filed through and received little assessment cards, and as I stood in line my competitive side kicked in-- and then I got my card-- I could hardly look at it-- but I thought it had a D written on it-- and I'd seen others get As. I was having trouble reading the handwriting-- there was a little note which might have illuminated it, but I couldn't make it out. with the near-certainty that I'd utterly failed, now documented, I felt like a complete and utter waste-- I was crushed-- I had liked the game, wanted to play it, and simply was frustrated by my own clumsy slowness.

there were a bunch of electronic consoles scattered around-- at several points during the game there had been two or three challenges going on at once-- people would be selected out and go off for whatever bit and return to the group and pick up wherever we were at the time-- one of the things going on seamed to be taking place on these monitors. so after everyone left, I tried my hand at it-- and was utterly flummoxed-- the operating environment was like nothing I'd seen before, full of many navigational choices, complex and graphical and clean and bright-- and I thought, here is the future, and I can't keep up.

then there were my glasses-- for some reason I discovered that I was unable to look, to see through both eyes at once-- the left eye would just stay closed and then if I forced it open, the right eye would close-- I thought the problem must be the glasses, the prescription, and in the process of fiddling with them, snapped them in half.