recovery room

I had given in to peer pressure.  I was in Kings Island's "The Beast" Recovery Room.  I lay on a cot and was given a button to pin onto my shirt.  It read "I survived The Beast", although clearly I had not.  I was given coupons for a free soda and burger.  I passed them quickly to a friend, not interested in thinking about food just then.

I gave in once more to Roller Coaster Peer Pressure and rode The Racer at the same Cincinnati park another year.  Then I remembered an experience with my uncle when I was seven.  He and my father had taken me and Sister MD on the then-new Space Mountain at Disney World.  When we finished the ride my father commented on my sister's screams.  My uncle replied that it was precisely because of her screams that he had instead been worried about me in my silence.  Remembering my Recovery Room day, I decided that there was a good chance that my reaction to a roller coaster was to hold my breath.  This explained all the roller coaster experiences I'd had and it put an end to them forever.

Except.  (Of course there is an except.  Otherwise there'd be nothing for me to write about.)  Our school uses free passes to Six Flags over Georgia as an incentive to read.  Not that my kids need an incentive, but they both came  home at the end of the year with free passes.  For the past several years, Pook's pass has just gotten lost-ish and never discussed, let alone used.  He didn't know what Six Flags was and his brother was too young to be going out there.  And Six Flags for toddlers does not fit into my Don't Up The Ante philosophy.  But this year they both had passes and they both knew what the passes could get for them.  Ugh.  I wasn't looking forward to going, an experience of waiting in lines for hours punctuated by watching others ride three minute rides.

And then in came L&P!  Riding on white horses!  (or at least a red minivan)  They volunteered to take my children to Six Flags!  I accepted!  They scheduled a day and they went!  I worried!  (some)  They had an amazing time!  I went to dinner with my husband!  They spent almost 11 hours with my children!  (Do the number of exclamation marks adequately describe my happiness over not going to an amusement park with my children?)

The following is a sample of the day, dictated by Bug:

Six Flags
I went to Six Flags with my friends A and K and their mom and dad, and my brother Pook. The first one I did was the Wile E. Coyote Canyon Blaster. Everybody except for K went on it.  I went on it two times.  The first time, since it was the first one I did, it was just like a regular roller coaster to me.  The second time it wasn’t scary at all and I had my hands up the whole time.  

One of the roller coasters I went on was called The Ninja.  All The Ninja was was twists, upsides downs, corkscrews and sidewayses and hills and diagonals over a lake.  It looked kind of scary to me but it wasn’t to me.  It was all smooth except for a part at the very beginning when you just bumped down.  The upside downs weren’t very scary, they just felt like the other parts.

I was not quite old enough to do bumper cars all by myself because I couldn’t reach the gas pedal.  I did bumper cars two times.  I did the steering and the two times I traded grown ups doing it with me.  The grown ups did the gas.  I could reach the gas but not very well.  The second time I bumped into K on purpose.  I smashed into him!  I almost got Pook.  There was a big traffic jam at the end.  It will be very cool if the bumper cars had horms because you’d be honking them all the time.