Reflection from Jessica Niemela, BC Buddies Coordinator
Last Saturday’s BC Buddies Lazer Tag Extravaganza was a blast!
Once everyone arrived at Planet Lazer, we created our nick names for the games. The names were quite creative-Providence, Fortnite, Chestnut, RayRay- just to name a few.
For those of you who are familiar with lazer tag, it can be quite noisy which makes it difficult to listen for instructions. After informing Planet Lazer of our needs, we were able to acquire a private room where participants can listen with ease. Through this we hope to model the importance of advocating for access in any environment that we are in. Next, we gathered in the gear room and played two games of Lazer tag. For Game 1 we were arranged in three teams (blue, red and green teams) and in this round, blue team won. Game 2 was mayhem- there were no longer teams, and we all played against each other! Some of us got as much as 50,000 points!
After lazer tag we were all hungry and walked over to Old Spaghetti Factory for lunch. Everyone ordered off of the menu for themselves and we enjoyed bread, pizza, lasagna and ice cream. This opened up an opportunity for participants to practice their communication skills with an unfamiliar speaker, making sure that they got the correct order, and occasionally problem solving (e.g., one participant got a root beer instead of coca cola).
A pleasant surprise at the restaurant was discovering that one of the servers was a young man who was also hard of hearing! The kids were excited and we asked him what the most challenging part of his job is, and he said, “when you have many tables to serve at once; you are constantly thinking about a lot of things and you have to stay on your toes“. He also told us that he is taking creative writing and history at university. Some of us had a discussion at the table about how hard of hearing people are entirely capable of pursuing their career goals.
Once again we had a great time together! Thank you to everyone who could make it! We look forward to seeing you again at our next event on May 4th 2019.