Do tell if you have another crazy present-opening story, Lance
Oh, wow. I actually wasn't even going to bother bringing it up since I figured everyone here had forgotten about it by now.
Okay, well, for those that don't know the tradition, let me get you up to speed. During the Christmas Eve party at my parents' place, we all get together and open a gift or two at the end of the night before people start leaving. My cousin and I have a tradition going wherein we try to make each others' gifts as difficult to open as possible.
Here's a brief description of some of the things we've done to each other in the past.So what did we do this year? Well, my gift to him was
this awesome knife holder and a burned CD full of assorted video game and anime music. I wrapped those items like normal and stuck them behind my parents' shed in the backyard. What I actually handed him, though, was a cheap styrofoam cooler with a game case inside. The game case just had a slip of paper inside it that said "Look behind the shed." Surrounding the game case was two whole cans of spray foam. You know,
this stuff. You use it to patch big holes or gaps in drywall or piping or whatever. Once it hardens, it's kind of like styrofoam, but much denser. I gave him the cooler full of hardened spray foam (and a trash bag -- we did it on the back porch since it was a messy process) so he could rip away at it while I worked on his gift.
He sat me down and handed me his laptop, which was running a game he had made using RPGMaker. The game had three rooms: Maze Room, Boss Room, and Death Room. I had to get through all three of them before he would give me my gift. The Maze Room was self-explanatory: it was a big maze and I had to find the exit. I did that one first and it was a cakewalk. In the Boss Room, I was supposed to fight a boss (obviously), but as soon as I stepped into that room, all I saw was a switch. I inspected the switch and it said "Congratulations! You have completed this room!" which I thought was rather odd since I hadn't actually fought a boss. I didn't say anything, though, because I figured he had something up his sleeve. The Death Room was definitely the toughest. I had to guide my little RPG character through a maze of fire, and if I touched the fire, I had to go back to the start. Just to make things interesting, he increased the movement speed of the character in this room, so one little tap of the arrow keys would cause him to shoot forward three or four spaces. This maze was only one space wide, so I had trouble navigating through it.
After about ten minutes, though, my cousin conceded defeat because he couldn't get through the spray foam with his bare hands. The spray foam was actually my dad's idea, and he said that that stuff would be the texture and consistency of styrofoam once it hardened. Well, it wasn't. That crap was as hard as a rock. There was no way you could rip it apart with your bare hands. I had to give him a steak knife so he could cut through it. Once he did, though, he extracted his "game," checked behind the shed, and received his real gift.
As for his RPGMaker game, apparently there was a slight miscommunication on his part. His girlfriend had tested the game earlier to make sure it was actually doable, and when he handed the laptop to me, he had unknowingly loaded that file instead of starting a new one. That's why I didn't have to fight the boss; on that file, it had already been beaten. I did get through the Maze Room, though, so at least I conquered one of them. Oh, and his gift to me was the Wii points card I mentioned in my previous post. He just had it in his pocket the whole time.
This year's gift battle was a bit of a dud since we both messed up, but that's okay. I'll accept a draw. We'll just have to come up with some other new schemes and try again next year.
