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FEAR MISS PIGGIE

Fear Miss Piggie. For I am Miss Piggie, and I will conquer all.

No, not suffering the effects of St. Patrick’s Day residuals. I am basking in the glory of my battle victories.

OK, bear with me here and it will all make sense. I think.

My two brothers-in-law and three nephews decided to go play laser tag. For those of you not familiar, laser tag is a game in which you put on these high-tech looking vests that are covered with laser sensors, and run around a very dark room while very loud techno music plays and you try and shoot other people’s laser sensors with your laser gun. If you shoot someone’s sensor, their gun is frozen for 10 seconds. The object of the game is to (a) shoot other people (b) not get shot and (c) not run into the barricade that you didn’t see because you were busy looking for your sneaky nephew, rather than looking forward.

My nephews are 8, 13 and 15, so they were fairly confident they could easily handle the old guys in the room. Nevermind that one is currently in the military, one is a military veteran and one sits at a desk all day typing. (Typing hones your sharpshooter skills.)

After a quick briefing on the rules of the game (“No running. No profanity. No shooting actual guns.”), we were taken into a room to suit up.

As we donned our vests, we told that we could push a small button on the vest, and our game name would appear on a small screen on the vest.

This would help us determine our scores at the end of the game. While everyone else was getting cool American Gladiator names such as Ice and Excalibur, I pushed my button and saw that my assigned game name was, you guessed it, Warren G. Harding.

No, kidding, it was Miss Piggie, and my nephews had plenty of fun mocking me for my Muppet moniker, which I, being the mature adult I am, responded by saying, “Oh, yeah, well ... I can drive a car. Can you?” Not the best comeback of all time, I will admit.

Despite my less-than-intimidating name, we were ready to start the game. All six of us darted into the darkness, laser guns cocked and loaded.

The room is pretty big and has walls and partitions all around it. Skilled warriors lurk from barrier to barrier, shooting their opponents and then disappearing into the darkness.

Miss Piggie it turns out, is a skilled warrior. Moving like a shadow throughout the room, I crouched, ducked, hid and spun, making myself an unhittable target.

Well, not entirely unhittable, since my one brother in law decided that he would prefer to adopt a sit-and-wait approach, and made it his mission to find a corner where he could shoot at me over and over.

But aside from his sniper picks, I was a force to be reckoned with. I was freezing opponents left and right. I was so effective, I was even freezing my own teammates, something they explained to me after the fact was, in a word, uncool.

After about 10 minutes, a siren sounding, signaling the end of the games. We began to file out of the arena, ready to check out scores. The nephews clearly had fun, as they were bouncing out of the room, hollering and screeching about the game. The three adults came out with a little less bounce in our step, and far more sweat pouring down our faces.

When we got to the scoreboard, we saw that Miss Piggie had claimed the top prize.

“Who’s making fun of Miss Piggie now!?!?!?!” I said loudly.

“You’re still named Miss Piggie,” one nephew said.

We played one more game, and Miss Piggie continued her special-forces-like excellence. And, at the end of the game, the nephews bounded out again, and the adults moved out even slower. Miss Piggie was getting tired.

We had a great time, and before departing we said how excited we were to play the game again.

This, of course, was not the same sentiment that was echoed the next morning, when Miss Piggie had difficulty getting out of bed.

Apparently, a mere 20 minutes of laser tag for out-of-shape adults is comparable to an ironman competition.

Eventually, I am sure, the pain will subside. And I will be back. And you can, once again, fear Miss Piggie.