“You know you can leave that in the car,” one of my friends
hinted to me as I lusciously tied my flannel around my waist. “We’re at an amusement park. I know
what I’m doing,” I replied. I went to an amusement park with 5 of my “friends.”
Why do I quote friends you might ask? Well if they were my friends, they would
want me to find true love at an amusement park, which we all know starts with
your flannel shirt tied around your waist. Well, the joke was on them because
the girls could not resist. As I was walking through the park I saw a woman in
her 50’s close her daughter’s eyes, presuming that she was protecting her
daughter from this piece of temptation. Ok maybe I lied. Maybe this style left
with Shawn Hunter and the gang back in the 90’s, but I did see a father-son duo
with the same “shirt tied around the waist” strategy that I had. We kindly
nodded at each other giving the message, “Yeah, we know what we’re doing.” The
joke really was on my friends because it rained all afternoon. As they were
trying to find trees to walk under, I walked at a comfortable pace in wide open
spaces.
We rode 5 rides at the park. Scratch that. I rode 4. My
friends rode 5. The only one that I didn’t ride was called the Intimidator 305,
which was based on the life (and death) of Dale Earnhardt. Basically, it was
the fastest ride in the park at 95mph. I’m not about that life. Or death. One
of my friends, Perry, blacked out the first time he went on the ride. I say the
first time because somehow that inspired all of them to go on the ride a second
time. They actually tried to convince me to go on the ride with them the second
time, and their sales pitch was telling me the story about Perry blacking out.
The whole time they were trying to convince me to go on the ride, I was too distracted
at examining Perry for concussion-like symptoms. I did, however, go straight
the cameras where you can see the pictures of the people on the roller coaster,
and sure enough, 3 of my friends were screaming as Perry laid there limp and
his eyes in the back of his head.
Another ride we went on was The Dominator. My cousin, Tyler,
questioned the safety in the harness of the ride. I told him that there was
someone coming around fastening everyone’s harness, so Tyler relaxed. As the
guy got to Tyler, he checked his harness, and moved on. Tyler yelled, “What!?
You okay’d that!?” Since we were in the back row, we got the green light and
headed out. Tyler was still freaking out at the time. There was a random guy,
let’s call him Scottie, sitting next to Tyler. At the very beginning of the
ride, there’s a small dip, and then it takes you uphill. The small dip is
literally in the first 3 seconds of the ride. Right when we hit the little dip,
the guy next to Tyler screamed, “Oh what da hail!” Scottie was screaming the
entire ride, while Tyler kept screaming, “Bug in my eye! Bug in my eye!” I laughed
hysterically the entire time.
My favorite ride was The Volcano. We, also, rode this one
twice. The first time, we waited in line for 45 minutes. To make the time pass
by, I spent a lot of the time convincing Trav that there was a bee next to his
ear. I mean at first there was, but watching him freak out over and over was
too good. The second time we went, we were waiting in a
slightly shorter line inside this cave that leads to the Volcano ride. All of a
sudden, a stench of someone’s butthole lingered in the cave and everyone had
that face like they were sucking on a lemon warhead. It WAS right after lunch,
we DID just have Panda Express, and I STILL had butterflies before going on
this ride…so yeah, I did it.
“Deny til you die,” I repeated to myself over and over after I saw parents
holding their children closer in fear that they were being gassed. Why did I
not only deny it but blame it on Trav? You would too if you had to live up to
the sexy flannel-tied-around-the-waist reputation.
P.S. I didn't mention Katie Tate, wife of Perry. She also rocked the shirt-around-the-waist style. "You do you," she told me. I did me, Katie. We did we. #wisdom
