When I was a freshman in college I signed up for Psychology 101, classic freshman move. I remember in particular the textbook that I bought for the class. I loved all the interesting content that I would study in the upcoming months, but I was really fascinated with the book cover. It was a side profile image of a man’s head. The brain itself consisted of a maze, front to back, top to bottom. With a quick finger test I was able to find my way in and out. It worked. I loved that and never forgot about it.
A year later I was once again at the church taking a break as the custodian to check in on Jon, the youth group director. We started talking about using the gymnasium for some new activity, but we were stuck on anything feasible. And that’s when the idea was born.
“You know, Jon, last year I bought a text book for one of my classes and I’m thinking we might have an idea.” I started.
“Keep going.” He encouraged me.
“Would it be possible to construct a maze in the gym, I mean, big enough for the youth group to access?”
“Are we talking about walk-through access? That seems difficult and out of our price range.”
“Well, we do have a lot of chairs and tables up there for our large events. What if we set tables in certain places to recreate the maze?”
“That’s good, but we would need to cover it. I got it! We could buy some of that landscape black plastic and drape it over the tables creating the pathways of the maze.”
“That’s brilliant!” I said and returned with, “Would they crawl through it? Sounds like a lot of work. The girls won’t like it.” I said.
“We could get some of those four wheel rolling seats that we used to use in grammar school.” Jon finished. It was settled. We had a workable idea. Just need to work out the details.
Setting up the maze turned out to be more of a job than we had originally considered. Step one was to set out all the tables in their proper places. This maze was big. It covered two-thirds of a full floor basketball court. Mapping it out was tedious and prone to errors. But eventually we had everything in place. We brought out several extra-large rolls of the landscaping material. They unfolded into the perfect width to cover the table and both sides. We unrolled our way to the next table and taped it into place, creating our first run of the maze.
With the four wheel rollers nearby, I took one for a test drive. I laid on my back and went in head first. That seemed like the right way for me and I flew through it with the help of my arms and feet. Test complete. We began building out the maze until after several hours the basketball court now hosted a huge human maze. The kids are going to love this!
The following day arrived and our Big Maze Event was on. The kids started coming into the gym. We were having a great turn out. They stood in amazement looking out onto the maze before them. Some parents came up with their kids and marveled at the site.
The time to complete was longer than we expected and varied a lot. Some people just don’t have this particular skill. One girl panicked and stood up in the center of the maze. She was crying. And so was I because now I had to go in and fix it.
After twenty attempts by anyone curious enough to try it we were done. We had a clear winner by a full minute better time than anyone else. It was, of course, my brother Charlie. I thought I heard whispers of collaboration and maybe even foul play. I was appalled by these accusations. And besides, some things should just be taken to the grave.
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Glad I missed this one. Too fun though. Glad you are so creative.
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