They seemed like a nice family… except for the dad. There were five in the family total: Mom, Dad, two sons, and the older son's girlfriend. I was along for the ride as the random.
The game we were playing was a typical serial killer room in which the killer had caught you, and you had an hour to escape before he returned. I had the feeling, though, that the family had chosen this game for a reason: they secretly hoped that the killer was real and that he would take out their dad while the rest of them escaped. I felt this, because every time "Dad"--we'll call him Doug I guess--said something that sounded unpleasant, critical, or overly harsh (which happened often), the family would take turns glancing at me and giving me that look that said, "Yes, we know our dad is an asshole. We're sorry. Please play along like we have throughout our miserable, tormented lives. You can't win. Welcome to tour ongoing hell."
Prior to the game, our game master had announced that anyone leaving the game would not be allowed back in. About ten minutes in, Doug announced, "I'm out!" and started to describe his intestinal problems that were driving him from the killer's lair into the lobby. The family pretended to be sorry to see him go, in the same way, I imagine, that they would pretend to be sad at his funeral after the serial killer offed him. I see the family a month later at a picnic, laughing it up and having the time of their lives, never once mentioning their missing father.
About twenty minutes into the game, Doug returned. He did not look happy. I do not know what transpired or how he got back into the room despite the company's strict "no return" policy, but it couldn't have been pretty. This was confirmed after the game when Doug flipped off the game master as he took our photo. True story.
And so Doug grumbled and griped his way through the game with us, all the way through to the end when we got stuck on a puzzle that involved removing a key from a pipe. Actually, the son and his girlfriend got stuck on the puzzle, while the rest of us milled around trying to accomplish something, which wasn't really possible given the linear nature of this game. Serial killers can be so cruel.
Doug interrupted them. "You know there's an entirely different way to approach this," he said, grabbing the puzzle from the couple and demonstrating. He didn't solve it, but he did, in fact, show us another way of going about it. The couple took the pipe back, and slowly, inevitably, the clock ran out. We all died with Dad. The family's unspoken dream would not come true that night.
When the game master came to escort us out, the son and his girlfriend had a question about the puzzle that had done us in. "How do you solve this?" they asked. "We've been trying to move the key through the pipe with this magnet."
"Uhm, that's not a magnet," said the game master, staring at the bolt that the girl held in her hands.
Turns out, Dad was right about how to solve the puzzle. So, ever since then, I've tried to figure out the lesson of this adventure. Is the moral that you shouldn't be a jerk because then people won't listen to you when it matters, or should we conclude that you should listen to everyone, even when it is extremely unpleasant to do so? I don't know the answer to that question because it involves dealing with people. But I do know this: Not everything is a magnet. So there you go. Lesson learned.