My family is always teasing me about not going on thrill rides that drop five stories or adventures like long hot hikes down sheer cliffs with falling rocks. It’s not that I’m a chicken, but I don’t like throwing up in public or being scared out of my wits that I’m going to fall off a precipice…. besides I don’t have the right shoes….
So, anyway we take off on a weekend family adventure to the State Fair where there is an infamous water slide that is several stories high. I figure it’s hot in Sacramento in the summer and what harm can a water slide do and won’t it feel good to be wet on a hot day?
I am determined to follow through with this but my family keeps teasing me, “Oh no you won’t, Mom… You’ll just chicken out when we get there, etc.” After a little more than two hours drive, it is beginning to get hot in the car and I feel like, “Let’s get this over with…”
I’m kind of nervous about it, but I figure it must be safe or why would so many people do it? We pay our entrance to the fair and head directly for the slides with our bathing suits and towels. We change in some little wooden changing rooms and check our clothes in nylon mesh bags with an attendant. We begin the walk to the stair cases which loom ahead of me like Mt. McKinley.
Up we go the kids and husband hopping and running ahead of me, occasionally stopping to look back to make sure I’m still following. Up one flight and two and three and four and five flights of stairs. Two hundred feet in the air on top of a platform with four or five water slides side by side. It isn’t that busy yet because it’s still early in the day. the lines will get longer and so will the wait with the heat of the day. The kids go first thrilled to be here and eager with enthusiasm.
I am wearing my new burgundy bathing suit with the white polka dots, low cut v-neck exposing my lovely cleavage edged with white piping. It is a classy suit and features the decorum of a skirt I like to wear hiding my privates and the tops of my thighs just so. I adjust the rear of the suit with a snap of the elastic as I step forward for my instructions. Husband is waiting beside me in case I need help or urging to go ahead with this idiotic venture.
The attendant at the top tells me with all seriousness to sit on the rubber mat he is handing me and,”Do not let go in any circumstance.” A trickle of water is racing down the slide lubricating the surface. The attendant puts the mat down and holds it in place with his foot as I adjust myself onto it. I hold on in front as he has instructed me. Then he gives me a strong shove. I do not expect what happens next.
“Arghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! (breath) Arghhhhhhhhh!” (breath)
The mat comes out from under me, my skirt flies up into my face, I struggle to hold the mat with one hand which is now flying above me over my head, and hold my skirt down with the other. My boobs are jogging back and forth in my soft cup bra threatening to burst out of the thin support they are receiving from the minimal cut of the suit.
Suddenly THUMP! I hit a bump and it nearly knocks me out. I am airborne. I have lost contact with the slide. I know I am going to die. I am going to fall of f this giant slide to my death and fall in a clump like a bleeding Ibis at my children’s feet below.
“Arghhhhhhhh! (breath)
I hit another bump. All I can do is think about what I have learned in dance class to keep my center, tuck in my stomach and try to protect my internal organs from this abuse as I hit another bump. The bumps knock the breath out of me but, being airborne terrifies me as I am sure I will somehow plunge off the side onto the hot pavement below.
“Arghhhhhhhh!” (breath)
This continues until I have bumped all the bumps and slid the full distance. I am coming to the end of the ride. I am still alive and am going about fifty miles per hour. (Isn’t there something about the bigger you are the faster you go?)
There are about twenty-five feet of shallow water to slow my accumulated speed and I see the attendant waiting to stop me at the end. I make a HUGE rooster tail and spray the entire crowd. They have been watching my descent and have been eagerly awaiting my arrival in the hot sun. They cheer and whistle and applaud. Husband is right behind me on the next slide. Everyone is so intent on watching me that they don’t notice the rooster tail he has made.
Everything is in slow motion now and as I get to the very end of the slide the attendant seeing my very large burgundy body speeding towards his little skinny 115 pound skeletal frame steps aside and doesn’t help me stop. But Husband is there to offer his hand and I have abruptly stopped anyway exactly at the lip end of the slide.
My two little kids just look at me incredulously from the front of the cheering crowd. My son looks up at me as I stand victoriously before him and says, “Mom, you ought to be on “That’s Incredible!” My daughter is too stunned to speak.
I make two more trips up those stairs and down the slide. It doesn’t get any easier, but I do it, and I never have to do it again.
(First published 8/8/12)
