A Teen…A Mystery….A Prom…A Birthday….A Success!

I’m not real­ly sure if Court­ney knew what she want­ed to do for her 15th Birth­day. But last month we took a trip to the Mall of Amer­i­ca, when all the kids did­n’t have school on a Fri­day, and we perused shops and just had a nice day.

We walked into Games by James and on one of the back end caps they had all their Mys­tery Mur­der Din­ner Par­ty games…but they had came out with some new “Teen Mys­tery Din­ner” games (no mur­der). Court­ney saw one and her and Amy talked it over about doing some­thing like that for her birth­day party.

So “Pan­ic at the Prom” was purchased.

Amy and Court­ney did a lot of plan­ning for it and chose the guest list. Amy and I decid­ed to real­ly make it authen­tic and reserved a Hotel Ban­quet Room (and hotel rooms for a sleep­over and pool­side fun the next day as well).

It was a blast!

The Premise of the game is that it is Prom night (a Hawai­ian Luau the­me’d Prom) and some­one set off the springklers/fire alarm and flood­ed the ballroom…all the sus­pects are the “only” ones “dry”.

There is a Prin­ci­pal, a Goth Chick, A bul­ly, “prom Queen” and her best friend, A wan­na be pop­u­lar chick, the Bul­ly’s sis­ter, and a very smart nerd.

Court­ney, a few of her friends, Amy, Myself and Amy’s Mom Mona were all in atten­dance (we also had our oth­er chil­dren sequestered in our hotel room with some movies and books, and my mom head­ed over after work, so we had a mini vacay!)

First, every­one’s role was drawn from a hat. So NOTHING was planned, peo­ple were not matched up with roles that “fit” them. Keep that in mind.

Amy had the “Prin­ci­pal” role, Court­ney was the Goth Chick and Mona was the “very smart” but “wants to be pop­u­lar” per­son. The oth­er girls, filled in the oth­er roles.

I had no role, i was just there as a DJ and to do “Prom Photos”.

As the guests arrived, they were hand­ed a book­let, that told them more about their char­ac­ter and what to reveal and what to keep secret, and so on.

As every­one is in their cor­ner of the room read­ing, Amy (the Prin­ci­pal of the School) chuck­les and tells me her hus­bands name is Rober­to, and they met in Europe. Which is fun­ny, because my name is Bert. So I became rrrrrROBER­TO! (roll that R) the Latin Pho­tog­ra­ph­er!

I then tell Court­ney, “When peo­ple get their pho­tos and I count, I can count in Span­ish!” and I pro­ceed to hold up two fin­gers (on acci­dent) and say “UNO!”

Court­ney Looks at me and says, “appar­ent­ly your rrrrrROBER­TO! ‘Stu­pid’ Latin Pho­tog­ra­ph­er…” (She’s a fun­ny one that girl.)

So I took that lit­tle made up role and real­ly ran with it.

All night long, peo­ple were “reluc­tant” to get their pho­tos tak­en (except for Mona–more on that in a bit). So I would stand by my stu­dio light and tri­pod and look at the group and say, with a large smile and two thumbs up, “PICTURE!” Nothing….so I do it again! Or yell out “PICTURE! CLIKY CLICKY!” (I did­n’t know eng­lish real well..so I spoke very little)

Final­ly, Court­ney’s char­ac­ter grabs the Bul­ly char­ac­ter and they run over and get in front of the cam­era. Using my wire­less remote, I look at them and (hold­ing up two fin­gers) say “UNO!” Then on “Dos” I snap the pho­to (not on three) and then when I should have said three, I say calm­ly, “Finite” (rough­ly prou­nounced ‘fin-neat-tay’, for “fin­ished”)

The next group of girls come over for their pho­to, and Court­ney’s bul­ly friend yells out…“Smile on Uno!”

Which was hys­ter­i­cal all night long because the girls would start to get into the pho­tos and I would be all, “finite…go, go”.

Some­times I would­n’t even count, they would walk into the frame, and “start” to get into posi­tion, and I would click the pho­to and say “finite”. So they were on their toes all night long about when I was going to take the pho­to. (I got some very inter­est­ing and fun­ny pho­tos out of it!)

Mona would always try and run over (in all my excit­ed yells of “PICTURES!” and as soon as she would get close I would say “Finite” and shut the flash on my cam­era or turn off the stu­dio light. The girls were crack­ing up…Amy could­n’t breathe she was laugh­ing so hard.

I would always start out very excit­ed and upbeat and exag­ger­at­ed and then would com­plete­ly switch demeanor at the end of the mini pho­to ses­sion and say calm­ly, “finite”.

 

At one point, I got a lit­tle bored as the group is just “min­gling” between chap­ters and so I jump in front of my cam­era (which drew every­ones atten­tion) and, using the remote, start pos­ing and click­ing the shut­ter release and just being goofy.

I then run over and hook my arm into Amy’s and drag her over to the stu­dio set­up (and she is say­ing…“uh oh, what’s are we doing?” ) and I start pos­ing with her and click­ing the remote…then I drag/push her out of the frame and say “finite” and Amy just stands there laugh­ing and say­ing, “I have no clue what just hap­pened!” Amy and the girls are just dying from laughter…

I then start drag­ging oth­er girls into the frame and doing the same thing. They start to catch on and so they start mak­ing pos­es too. Oh it was so much fun!

At one point Mona comes run­ning over for a group shot and I turn and stick out my right hip/butt and she runs into it (and pro­ceeds to bounce off me) and goes…“OWW…where is my Appen­dix sup­posed to be…because I think it moved!”

All night I would pick on Mona and take real­ly bad pho­tos of her or (when my cam­era was real­ly act­ing up…and my shut­ter but­ton was­n’t work­ing) blame her for break­ing my camera…

The girls LOST IT!

At one point I grabbed my cam­era off the tri­pod and start­ed quick­ly run­ning around the room and snap­ping real­ly close up pho­tos of the girls…(where I hap­pened to get a great pro­file shot of Courtney).

I had so much fun!

So as the sto­ry pro­gress­es, you find out that Court­ney is look­ing for her bio­log­i­cal moth­er, who hap­pens to be the prin­ci­pal (Amy)…and Amy’s char­ac­ter could­n’t attend her Senior prom because she was preg­nant with Court­ney’s Char­ac­ter.  And her hus­band rrrrROBER­TO! was actu­al­ly, Robert…they met in nevada…which was a REAL shock to me…no won­der I did­n’t know enough spanish…I was­n’t even latin!

When that lit­tle tid­bit was let out of the bag, most of the girls look over at me (I am stand­ing by the food area) and I meek­ly look up from my plate of food and say “Si?”

So, it was real­ly creepy how, just from draw­ing names out of a hat, that Court­ney and Amy get char­ac­ters that are moth­er and daugh­ter AND that the Prin­ci­pal missed her senior Prom because she was preg­nant, just like Amy had and had a hus­band name Robert!

Court­ney said that even most of the oth­er char­ac­ter real­ly fit in line with their coun­ter­parts (not all, but quite a few).

We then had cake, presents and time left over to have  a lit­tle dance party…where we did the Elec­tric Slide, Macare­na and even some Thriller!

Then off to the rooms for relax­ation and sleep before the water slide the next morning.

All in all, it was a fan­tas­tic night and I had so much fun just cre­at­ing this char­ac­ter and run­ning with it, to keep the group enter­tained between chap­ters. It was so much fun!