We went to the beach for a week, even though going to the beach is a horrible idea when you have children. It’s hot, and expensive, and you have to pack so much shit that you may as well hire a Mayflower truck. But my wife couldn’t stand the idea of spending an entire summer inside the same home, staring at the same walls, driving on the same roads. Do it long enough and you come down with a kind of expanded cabin fever, encompassing anything within a five-mile radius. So off we went.
Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, is like a lot of East Coast beach towns. There are bars and ice cream parlors and little tiny surf shops that people crowd into to soak in a little bit of air-conditioning and peruse T-shirts with tired Anchorman quotes. There’s a wide boardwalk that you can stroll along to gawk at all the white beach trash: four-hundred-pound people in tank tops, women with torso-length tattoos of the Pittsburgh Steelers logo, shoeless children, etc. The main attraction along this boardwalk is Funland, an amusement park with rides that vary in quality from “second-tier Six Flags ride that you get on because the roller coaster line is too long” down to “loosely bolted gypsy carnie death trap at the Allendale County Pig Show.” The kids were intent on going to Funland every day. They didn’t want to go to the beach. They didn’t want to sit in a restaurant and eat, like, food. All they wanted was Funland. Funland was the goal. Funland Funland Funland.
We arrived at my in-laws’ modest town house in nearby Dewey at around 4:00 P.M. I asked the kids if they wanted to go out for dinner.
“FUNLAND!”
I told them that it might be a little late for Funland, so maybe we should wait until—
“FUNLAND!”
“Well, what about the beach?” I asked.
“FUNLAND!”
“So, I guess you two want to go to Funland.”
“FUNLAND!”
“All right. Let’s go.”
My wife grew concerned. “Honey, it’s getting late for them.”
“Oh, come on,” I said. “We’re on vacation. We’re supposed to loosen up. Let them enjoy themselves.” Secretly, I had no issue with us going to Funland because there was an ice cream store a block away from Funland that had Peanut Butter Tastykake ice cream, and I wanted it. I wanted to swim in it.
We all hopped in the car and drove to the boardwalk. I found a parking spot that was roughly the same distance to Funland as the house we were staying in. I got the kids out and we began to march in the lethal July heat toward the park of their dreams. By the fourth block, the kids were noticeably dragging. My son asked me to pick him up. I carried him five feet and then put him back down because my back hurt. We passed by a row of shaggy rental houses, each one designed to house the maximum allowable number of drunken twentysomethings. I saw them all out on their rickety patios, blasting music and drinking cocktails out of plastic Solo cups. I used to do that sort of thing. God, that was fun. I wanted to run into one of the houses, down G-and-Ts by the fistful, do five bong rips, and then pass out on a filthy mattress in the basement.
My daughter caught sight of a giant dragon’s head rising over the houses and immediately screamed with joy.
“That’s Funland!” she cried out. “That’s the Sea Dragon!”
“Is dat Funlann, Deddy?” asked my son.
“Yeah,” I said. “I think we’re close, guys.”
We staggered into the park and both kids went sprinting for their preferred rides. The boy went with my wife over to a set of miniature cars that drove around in a tight circle, while the girl got in line immediately for the Sea Dragon: a giant Viking ship that went back and forth, higher and higher, until it was nearly upside down. It didn’t go all the way around, which was good. When I was a kid, I went to an old amusement park in Minnesota that had a ship that went all the way around. You could see the wallets and spare change and vomit raining down whenever it hung in midair.
I went to the ticket booth, threw down a twenty, jammed the ticket book into my sweaty shorts pocket, and rushed to join the girl at the front of the Sea Dragon line. We took a seat at the back of the ship (cost: five tickets each). I craned my head, trying to locate my son and my wife. But the ride started and I gave up my efforts because watching the girl’s face as we went higher and higher was such a joy. The ship cleared the rooftops and now we could see the beach, the ocean, and the surrounding towns. The higher we went, the harder she laughed. I made sure to play the victim for her.
“Whoa, hey!” I screamed. “You didn’t tell me it was gonna go THIS high! This is too high! GAHHH!”
“AHAHAHAHAHAHA!”
Sixty seconds later, the ship settled back down on the ground and the girl demanded another ride, and then another. There was barely a line at this point, so we were able to take as many consecutive trips as we pleased. By the eighth time, I was seasick and begged her to spare me from another ride.
“I’m not joking this time,” I said. “I’ll die if we do that again. I have vertigo now.”
“More, more, more!”
“I’m gonna switch with Mom and she’s gonna take you. She hates rides like this, so you’re probably gonna end up playing in the arcade. Can you deal with that?”