A 25 minute conversation in the front of a car, that beat the thing we had paid for

A weekend in Montreal with friends I had not seen properly in a long time. Two of the group I met that morning for the first time: my friend's brother, and a friend of his.

We were driving out to an escape room. I was at the wheel, and one of the people I had known for about four hours was in the front beside me. Twenty five minutes, maybe thirty.

I don't know what started the conversation. Early on I told him about my experience of therapy, and not the tidied-up version you hand to somebody you have just met. He asked multi layered questions in response, he was clearly listening. I asked him about his life and what he wants to do next, and he answered that properly too, which is also not what people usually do with that question.

I went first, and what came back was the same.

Then we arrived and did the escape room. Ninety minutes, paid for, built by people who do this professionally. It was lit, scored, timed, locked, with the pressure arriving on cue. It did exactly what it was designed to do, and I enjoyed it.

The conversation had none of that. Two men in the front of a car, and the only thing arriving through my senses was the road, which I was responsible for staying on.

Two things stood out.

(1) They came out about level in terms of satisfaction. Sounds strange, and a bit philosophical, but it is true, and not what I would have expected. One of them had been engineered by professionals to produce a feeling, and charged us to walk in. The other required nothing except one of us going first.

(2) What each one left behind was not the same. The room left an afternoon experience. The car left a person, whom 24 hours previous I'd never met, that I'd welcome seeing again. And more interestingly, I would probably not have said that on the strength of an hour and a half in a locked room.

The surface version of that conversation was fully available on that drive. Where are you from, what do you do, how do you know Brian. That is the conversation I have with almost everybody I meet, I am good at it, and it usuaully leaves nothing of real worth behind.

The part I like less is this. I asked questions to somebody who knew nothing about me. I do not do it with the people who have known me for years, and they were on the same trip.