Ninja Night

Tonight for our FHE, my roommate got kidnapped by ninjas. I know what you’re thinking: What self-respecting young woman manages to get herself kidnapped by ninjas in the middle of a young single adult activity? Let me tell you, it happens to the best of us.

Let me preface this account by informing you that our family home evening activities tend to be very staid: long formal lesson, brief stiff activity, reserved conversation, quick parting of ways. And Camber had prepped everyone by informing them that this would be an exciting evening of “team-building activities.” We were expecting a big turnout, as you can imagine.

I taught a brief lesson on never leaving behind any of our brothers and sisters. I stalled as long as I could, but the ninjas still hadn’t shown up, so my friend Sherilyn jumped up with one of the most popular games known to adults party-goers: Simon Says. Then Camber ran to answer the door, we heard her scream, ninjas in ski masks came running into the living room doing dramatic karate chops, and we rushed outside just in time to see . . . Camber carefully explaining to the neighbor that it was all a joke and they didn’t need to call the police—before Camber was whisked away by the fearsome ninjas.

Fortunately, Sherilyn happened to have a copy of Worst Case Scenarios for FHE Groups, which just happened to have an entry explaining what to do if your FHE group leader gets kidnapped. We followed the instructions to the letter: we asked the Armenian grocer down the street how to say “Thank you” in Armenian (apparently ninja rescuers should be culturally sensitive in many languages). When we got it right, he gave us a clue sending us to the cemetery up the road.

There we were met by none other than the ninjas themselves. Two of them spoke only Ninjese, but fortunately they had a translator, who sent us on a quest to find a certain name on a headstone. We tracked it down using the light from our cell phones and when we presented it to the ninja master, he sent us to Billy Joe’s Ninja Training Camp at the playground across the road, where we learned to meditate, slide, and build a pyramid.

When we had accomplished our ninja training, we returned home to find Camber ready to reward us with ninja headbands. It was an altogether heroic evening. And no one even had to call the police.