It was a wonderful, oven-hot, red-ozone alert day that you just love to send your children out to play in. :) That's why we thought it would be the perfect day to go to the local water-park. But we stayed nice and cool while waiting in the mile long lines for 30 second slide rides. On one slide that I took Bennett on, we ended up getting turned around backwards in a two seater tube and had to go down the entire dark slide backwards. I just knew the end of my life was close at hand.
I freak out going down big slides anyways from an accident I had at Wet-N-Wild like 16 years ago (where I received a neck injury). First of all, I get Bennett situated in the 'front- hole' of the 2 seater tube and finally get myself in position behind him. I find out a little to late that Bennett is really a little too small for this slide since he's practically falling thru the hole in front of me. So, I'm trying to prop him up with my legs while screaming for him to "HOLD ON TIGHT!!!".
We hadn't even descended into the 'black hole' for the first 3 seconds when I realize we have a problem. Our tube is not going, yet we are on a slope. Bennett & I together obviously don't weigh enough to make the inner tube glide smoothly down it's course like the hundreds of others before us. Right as we begin our descent, we start a weird kind of bouncing - not part of the 'fun' promised us on this thrill seeking ride.
My first thought was that maybe Bennett got his leg caught under the tube and its being bent backwards as we're trying to slide, making us have a jerking motion. It was almost as if no water was going under us. Oh boy, what's a mom to do? With lightening speed, I yank my boy into my lap and notice that the front of the tube is now off the slide and the weight of Bennett and I on the back half of the tube is dramatically effecting the course of our 'slide fun'. So, we are in the pitch blackness of this fun water ride, hundreds of feet up in the air, suspended only by the tiny metal beams supporting this mammoth plastic structure that is promised to bring us much water excitement - only instead, I am falling backwards, in the dark, with my 3 year old on my lap, and know that sudden death is only a millisecond away.
When I opened my eyes and stopped screaming, we were actually at the bottom of the ride and no one seemed to care that we were backwards and that I was shaking like a leaf. It took every ounce of strength I had left in me to catapult him over the side in order to reach solid ground. At which point he declares in a rather shaky voice, "That was fun, Mom. Let's do that again!" Poor Bennett - his first experience on a 'big-people' slide and it had to be with me and end up like this. I have totally thwarted his definition of 'normal'. He didn't know it wasn't supposed to be like that and that the adult doesn't normally end up crying at the end of the ride.
