Malltease Manhunt

We had the our second annual Malltease Manhunt today, an idea we stole from Butler's crew at Calvary Baptist church. Eighteen of the high school kids, college students and leaders put on disguises and wonder the mall. The kids have mug-shot books that show each of the people they're trying to find, without the disguises. We had six big teams (pictured on the left) wandering the mall, looking for their suspects. When they find the person in question, they have to join hands around the person and recite, "Twinkle, Twinkle little star, we think we know who you are. You are (fill in the blank)." The person would then give them a poker chip of some denomination based on the difficulty of the disguise.

Nate's team thought they'd found one of the girls (Courtney Novara) and circled around her and recited the rhyme, ending with "you're Courtney". She stared at them and said, "Yeah, I am." They responded, "Can we have the poker chip?" Her response: "Huh?" They'd found the wrong girl.

I walked around with Reagan (pictured below with a pregnant Tiff), in a Best Buy shirt and cheesy, dirty mustache. I was an old man with reading glasses (prescription glasses - I couldn't see ten feet in front of me). He and I wandered through Nordstrom's at one point as the staff stared at this odd combination of people. As soon as we'd spot a group of kids, we'd let them pass and start following them around the mall. At one point, we thought we'd make awesome CIA agents based on our ability to follow people - until we'd get distracted by something, and lose track of the people we were tracking. All the sudden we didn't feel like great secret agents any more. Apparently secret agents have to be very, very focused. Not a great trait for either of us. Reagan also taught me the game called: "Touch the stranger" that he and his buddies play at Cedar Point. I stood back and watched as Reagan walked up to a guy and ran his hand across the guys jacket, trying to make it seem accidental. I laughed as the guy turned and stared at Reagan as he walked by, trying to figure out what the guy was doing. Reagan explained that the greatest act is to draw an entire "S" across someones back - something you can't "accidentally" do. He explained how one of his buddies walked up to a guy and squeezed his arm four times and walked away. Odd, huh? Darn funny to see, though.

Five of the six teams ended up finding us. Nate's team ended up not finding us partly because Reagan and I ended up following them for about a half hour (only losing them 12 or 13 times when we got distracted).

Check out some of these outfits.

Katie Green was dressed like a home-schooler, Fez and Kasey did the Emo thing, complete with his lip ring, eyeliner, nail polish.

Regan looked oh so creepy and Tiff ended up ditching the wig, but the baby looked oh-so-real. Meghan Greene looked blended in, while J and Jess were dressed as business people - wearing normal business clothes - something you don't see either in often.

Great night. Jim Jeffrey was the only one to be bothered by Mall Security. Jim had a leather jacket, a t-shirt, his hair slicked back and dark reflective sunglasses - looking like your typical mall stoner/shop-lifter. They followed him into the bathroom to see what he was up to. It was a great night tonight!

You can see the rest of the pictures here.