My son learned a valuable lesson today. He learned that gravity makes its own rules, and he learned about two types of fear.
The first type of fear is the type that people get from thrill rides or horror movies. It's a nervous laugh followed by an adrenalin rush, while in the back of your head you know you're safe. Sure, as that roller coaster barrels down, you may have the fleeting though that maybe just this time the track won't hold, but it isn't really strong enough to taste.
The second type of fear is usually only experienced by someone shortly before they die. It's the feeling that something has gone horribly, terribly wrong. Like that pain in your shoulder radiating down your arm, or that tree you know you won't miss. It's a very different type of fear.
Here's the situation, and before anything gets too out of hand, I'll let you know that Kevin and I lived. Kevin weights about 50 pounds soaking wet. I weigh 356 pounds (down from 391...a work in progress). I'm a big fella. But Kevin's 8 and wanted to ride the tornado water slide with his daddy. He'd ridden it with his mom, and it was no big deal.
We climbed the six stories to the top of the ride, which almost killed me right there. No line, and Kevin took the stairs two at a time. I was almost having a stroke when we got to the launchpad.
The float had four seats, and Kevin took the closest one. I took the one opposite him, sacrificing dignity to get my fat butt into the float hole. Kevin's side rose out of the water about a foot while my butt scraped the floor. The life guard gave us a shove with her shins to launch us, and we didn't budge. She tried again. Nothing. She tried to rotate the float and shove again, trying to hide a grin. She knew I was too heavy.
She took a running start and shoved the float hard enough to get us moving slowly towards the edge. "Sorry," I said, sheepishly.
Then we went over the edge into the Tornado.
I knew right away something was horribly, terribly wrong. Kevin was too high and I was too low, and we were moving way too fast. Kevin kept screaming, "You're making it go too fast! Stop it, daddy!" We picked up speed and angled almost 90 degrees, with Kevin slamming back and forth at the top of the float.
"Hold on!" I shouted to Kevin as if we were in a real tornado. Kevin clung to the raft for dear life. Just our luck if we broke free of the float and had to roll out of the ride like two wet hamsters in a sewer drain.
We kept our grips, although at one point I had to grab Kevin with my feet as my shoulders and head bounced against the slide. We shot out of the bottom of the slide fast enough to take the life guard by suprise, and went under briefly. Kevin was off the raft like lightening. I fell off clumsily, a fat walrus stuck in a tidal pool.
Real fear. Something to remember. And a wet flush of a ride with daddy, not to be repeated for a few hundred pounds.
