adoptedwriter | Survivor Idol Week 3 Challenge Topic: Smash & Grab

Me: I don’t swim. I won’t go. It's winter.

My mom: It’s not real water. It’s just a theme. You’ll be fine, Link. Clara, Hernán and Sam are going. I think Meg is too. Mrs. H. and Mrs. S. will be there to help you guys. Then you get to have pizza at Fazzoli’s afterwards.

Me: What’s a theme?

My mom: A theme is an idea, Link. Just an idea. There’s no ocean there.

Me: (whiny voice) Do I have to wear a swimsuit?

My mom: No Link. You will be inside with your friends from school.

Me: Good because it’s cold out. I will need a jacket, right?

I clasp my arms around myself gesturing chilliness.

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The bus is here. We all board and since it’s just our class, everyone gets their own seat. I want to sit alone but Clara and Meg always sit together and talk about One Direction. It’s a band. Plus they giggle a lot.

I have my iPhone and can listen to movie theme soundtracks instead. I like the music from Star Wars best. John Williams is the composer. He’s like Beethoven only Beethoven is dead, and John Williams is living. Mrs. H. says the bus ride will take 20 minutes.

I’m nervous and I check the time. I’ve never been to an escape room and it sounds scary, but all my friends are going for Friday Nights Out, and my mom says I don’t need to wear swim trunks even if it’s a tropical deserted island escape room. I only wear swim trunks when we go to Myrtle Beach at spring break.
I wonder how you escape from there.

This bus has a funny smell, and someone wrote a bad word on my seat. That’s wrong. I need to tell the teacher.

“Hey, Mrs. S!” I call out, “There’s a cuss word on my bus seat. It’s the one that starts with ‘F’. What should I do?”

She’s letting me move to the seat across the aisle because that seat is cleaner.

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We’re here but this place sure doesn’t look like an escape room. They have some crazy lights and they shine images of fish, sharks and octopi on the walls. That’s plural for octopus. Did you know that? Now it’s our turn to go in the next room. I hope there’s no water in there. I don’t like swimming because it burns my eyes and makes me feel cold.

Ok. So Mrs. H. says we have 30 minutes to solve a mystery but it’s not like Scooby Doo, but we still have to look for clues that will help us open special doors and get the magic keys and then we have to find the missing idols, line them up and spell the mystery word that will help us that open the sunken treasure box. Pirates look for sunken treasure. Have you ever seen Pirates of the Caribbean? It’s a Disney movie but for older kids. There are some scary parts.

The room is dark, and that is weird. Now I know why they called this the Island Survival Escape Room. It’s like being on the beach at night.You can’t see much, and they have sounds of ocean waves on the speakers. The ceiling looks like a bunch of stars. I lean my hand on a shelf and something falls on the floor. I think it’s a funny-looking key. It’s not like the key to my house or Mom’s car keys, so I show it to Clara. She says to show it to Mrs. H.

“Good Job, Link! You’re onto something there!” my teacher says.

I’m not sure what she means by that so I go back to the place where I was leaning and watch some more. Sam finds a gold coin under a fake candle. It’s good that it’s a fake one because a real candle could burn you. I’m not allowed to light candles at home.

Gold coins can make you rich so I think he found something good. Mrs. H. and Mrs. S. are excited about Sam’s discovery. Meg finds another key just like the one I found. When Clara lifts up a sea shell she finds another clue. It’s a third key. I check my phone. We have 20 minutes left.

Meg needs help opening up a box she found in a dark corner. She wants me to help her get it open so I do. She’s nice, but I like Clara better, but Clara likes Sam. The lid is on tight. The box makes a jingling sound. We see more gold coins. They occasionally glimmer in the dim light and Meg decides to reach deeper into the box. She finds one more key.
That was a surprise.

Mrs. S. has us bring our keys to the table that has key holes on the top in the center of the room. Sam is curious and sits on the floor. He looks over and sees a bottle on its side.

“It’s trash” he says. “I throw it out now?”

“You should not put trash in an escape room”, says Clara.

“Right. That could be germy” I add. “But wait a minute... That’s not a germy bottle. There’s a paper inside! Do you think we have a message in a bottle?” Mrs. S. Helps us open the bottle cap, and a paper falls out onto the table. The teacher uses her flashlight app so we can read the word “SMASH”.

“We’re supposed to smash something?” Meg asks.

“Everybody just keep looking for that last key” Mrs. S. tells us, so we do. I lean back against another wall. I’m not sure what to do, and I’m not so sure about that word “smash”. One time I was mad and smashed a drink glass on the kitchen floor. Mom took away my phone for two weeks. She said what I did was “inappropriate “.

I feel a loose brick in the wall. I jiggle it, and I can tell it’s fake. I didn’t break anything. Something falls out and makes a “ker-plunk” sound on the floor.

Another key!

We place the five keys on the table and find the holes where we are supposed to insert them. The problem is, some of the key holes don’t work so we have to try each key one at a time. This is getting on my nerves because time is running out! I look at my phone quickly.

“Hey, Mrs. H. and Mrs. S., we only have ten minutes left.”

Meg, Clara and Hernán frantically try each key. One falls off the table top, and Hernán drops to his hands and knees and sweeps the floor with his hand. “Got it!” he announces and bounces back up. They wiggle all the keys into the slots until they find the matches and the table top can now be scooted away. Inside the box under the table are four idols. They look like these silly, tiki statues with funny teeth I saw on vacation in a gift shop over spring break. My mom wanted to buy one.

“Where’s Idol Five?” Hernán n asks. “We gotta keep looking.

A light is blinking on the opposite wall and we drew closer. No one knows what to do about the light but Mrs. S. says someone should try to push the button by the light and see what happens, so I do and the word ‘smash’ appears on the other wall, so we all run over to that side of the room. I grab the ship’s wheel that suddenly appears and I turn it because that’s how you steer a boat, and a hole in the wall opens up. We find idol number five! Next I grab it quickly and we arrange our five found idols in order. Carved on their bottoms are the letters S, M, A, S, H. We set the five idols on the tray in order and a treasure chest pops out of another wall! The lights blink and we hear a lightning and thunder sound.

We did it!

The lights come on in the escape room, and we laugh and jump around. Now the speakers are playing hula girl music and colorful stars are shining on the walls by where we walk out. The girl at the front desk greets us at the door and gives everyone a lei to wear. They’re like the plastic ones we got at Meg’s birthday party last year. Mrs. S. has the front desk girl take a group picture of us. That’s going to go on our wall in the lifeskills room at school to show that we got rescued because we unlocked the mystery.

I feel brave now. We won and everyone is happy. I didn’t have to wear my swim suit or jump in cold water but I still helped my team get all the idols together.

I’m starving so now it’s time to grab some pizza!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

This is so cute, and I definitely read it from a young person's perspective. Escape rooms are fun. So many clever ideas this week about using "the island" and Idols and such! I'm enjoying it. :)

(Hope you got to have some pizza for real, ha!)

Thanks! It’s based on a high school student of mine who is autistic. The lifeskills class used to do a Friday Nights Out pre-COVID-19 once a quarter and see a movie, play putt putt or bowl. Then one time they went to an escape room. This little group was like a family.

You know, James is autistic (diagnosed as Asperger's before it all fell under the label of autism, but that hardly matters), and as I read this, I wondered if your speaker was autistic. The voice rang true to me - my son sounds like that sometimes, though he has to be VERY excited about something, or else his voice is very monotone - and while he doesn't use life skills classes or other resources necessary for some autistic children (and I'm so grateful those resources DO exist - kids need them!), he still has a rough time navigating some things. I like that this is based on a true story! Thank you for sharing this. :)

This is great! My nephew has autism and the way you wrote each sentence so matter-of-factly reminded me of him. Well written. :)

Thanks! I felt like I was “channeling “ Link (fake name) as I wrote this.

I love how you used the voice to create a real sense of the narrator and what his specific character and needs might be. He definitely seems to be on the spectrum.

I also thought it was brilliant how you incorporated so many elements from the original Survivor challenge.

Thanks so much!

This is absolutely wonderful! The way you bring Link to life on the page, and take us inside his head is fantastic. Have you thought of doing something like this in book form? It would offer so much insight and understanding.

Brava! Brava!

I may put together a teaching memoir book at some point. This would definitely go in there.

You really captured our other-abled children here! It's wonderfully done and nice to read a positive spin on the prompt!

Thanks. I love working w these kids.

This is a cute story! I saw you said it's based on a real student and they really did do an escape room. Was it really island themed like this, or did you make up the whole puzzle? I liked the interpersonal working together and solving it together.

They really did go to an escape room and then out to eat. It was 2 yrs ago now, and I wasn't actually on that field trip. I sort of included myself in this story (Mrs. S.) but the head teacher and the special ed director were actually the 2 chaperones. My husband I have been to an escape room once (in Gatlinburg, Tennessee), and that's my only experience. I made up the theme to go w our Island/Survivor Idol theme and made the puzzle based on some of the stuff I remember finding when my husband I went. I also Googled "escape toom themes" to check my work so as to keep it logical. The gold coins were kinda red-herrings, which did exist in the escape room I actually went to.

Oh this was a lot of fun! :) I've only done an escape room once, but I remember how stressful it was and how nervous I was that I might do something wrong or think out the clue wrong or something. Once we finally figured everything out and got out of the escape room, it felt awesome! I totally relate to everything Link is going through with this one. :)

Yeah. I felt pretty clueless myself but so badly wanted to do the thing everyone was talking about.

When I did, I mostly just stood around the whole time - it was actually three separate rooms that we had to go through, and it wasn't until the last room where my "stand around and just look at stuff" tactic finally worked; there were some newspaper articles on the wall and I was just reading them when I noticed that they were actually our last clue! :D It was fun but definitely stressful!

I really liked this one.
My son is autistic and it's a nice peace.

This sounds as if it's written from the POV of one of your students, maybe a boy who's on the autism spectrum? It's really well done.

I guess that would make you Mrs. S, then. :D

I think this would be a fun outing for just about anyone, unless the timeline stress became too overwhelming (as it almost did for Link). And for your special kids, it might be a rare opportunity to work together as a team and get a concrete result!

I also understand Link's issues with water in the eyes all too well. ALL water-- tap, chlorinated, or salt--stings. I don't know how other people stand it!

Yep! He is/was one of my students,(graduated last May and is in a work-study program now), and yes, I am Mrs. S.
I hated water of any sort in my face as a kid. I am OK now but no saltwater! Link is definitely a time-keeper type of guy.

This was really cute!! I love the Survivor theme of the escape room, and having one of the kids narrate the experience was a super great touch. I could totally see everything happening as they went.

I've never been to an escape room, but I really want to!

I liked it better than I thought I would. Thanks.

It's really sweet! Like some other readers here, I also caught the vibe that the speaker might be autistic. And, also like others, I have someone I love who's autistic! My little kiddo :> Some of the descriptions or perspectives in the piece felt relatable and so it made it especially sweet to read!

A nice slice of life! I've never done a room like this, but they seem super fun!

Thanks!!!

Survivor Idol Week 3 Challenge Topic: Smash & Grab

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