The Escape Artists

For Christmas my friend gave me an experience. These are my favorite kinds of gifts, as they lead to the best memories. This particular experience would involve getting locked in a single room and having to solve clues to try to get out. As you can imagine, I had a few hesitations.

1) Would I hyperventilate? The idea of four tight walls and no escape for an hour left me a little nervous. (Forget that half my college classes trapped me in a room for longer than that at a time...but there I always felt like I could run out to the bathroom if I had to)

2) Would we be okay with the other people in the room? There were only four in our group but the room held ten. Would this turn into a Lord of the Flies situation? I didn't want to die.

3) Would we be smart enough to solve all the clues and make it out before time? I didn't want to face the humiliation otherwise.

4) Would someone pass gas? In a room no bigger than 12x12, that would be utterly intolerable.

We arrived early and waited for the group in front of us to finish in our pirate ship-themed mystery room. They did not succeed. They had to shamefully be let out of the room by staff. They appeared sweaty, nervous, and disappointed. My trepidation grew. We nodded to the strangers who would join us on our quest. It was time to band together.

WE DID IT! And with over six minutes to spare. It turns out that my biggest problem is how to work different types of locks. We would work together and solve the clues, but then I couldn't work the codes properly in the locks. Apparently my life has revolved around simple combination locks and basic key locks. 

None of my other worries came to fruition. I didn't hyperventilate. We worked with the strangers swimmingly and nobody passed gas. At least, they might have, but I didn't notice as I tried to figure out how to work a lock with no numbers, letters or key holes. It was a memorable blast.