See any inherent problem with that?
No?
Well, let me help you out. What do teenage boys like to do from high places?
They spit.
So, as you’re zooming down the Alpine Slide, maneuvering around turns, adjusting your speed accordingly using the hand-held brake-joystick, you must also dodge innumerable loogies hocked by New Jersey’s future rocket scientists.
When I rode the slide, I was lucky enough to be hit with sputum on the back of my left hand. It could have been much worse, but I was still furious. If anyone was going to goober on me, it should be an attractive person, not some greasy-mulleted punk wearing cutoff jean shorts.
Unsurprisingly, perhaps, the teenage boys tended not to spit on the pretty girls. Instead of mucus, they would hurl compliments, maybe something as subtle as, “Nice tits, blondie!” Or a polite offer to “Sit on my face, bitch!”
On the ride ahead of me was a reasonably attractive redheaded girl of about sixteen. Some boys on the ski lift yelled, “Suck my dick!” and so she flipped them off with both hands. A dumb rookie move. She let go of the brake while taking a turn and flew off the track. There was really no winning when it came to the Alpine Slide, unless you held stock in Mercurochrome.
Between the hairy men, the loogie-spitting boys, and the open wounds, this day trip was turning into a disaster, and it was all my fault. Terri was eight months pregnant and waddling around uncomfortably in shorts and a maternity top. Mike wouldn’t go on any of the rides because he didn’t want to leave my mother alone in her condition. At least that’s what he said. That meant I had to supervise Jodi, who wanted to do things that prepubescent girls do, like splash around the shallow end of the wave pool and scream in a pitch that could shatter Austrian crystal.
Usually Mike was a big proponent of “getting our money’s worth.” That is, arriving at dawn and staying until forcibly removed. But by two in the afternoon everyone was ready to leave Action Park. Even Jodi casually remarked, “Let’s go now to avoid rush hour.” You know your whole family is having a crappy time when the ten-year-old feigns concern over the traffic patterns on the Long Island Expressway. But it was Saturday, and the rest of us knew that if we left at 2 p.m., traffic would actually be worse because of the beachgoers. Nevertheless, we all jumped right on Jodi’s bandwagon.
“Yes!”
“Rush hour!”
“Let’s get the hell out of here!”
As we started to leave, though, I was overcome by the feeling that the day was incomplete. I had been deceived by the ad executives who produced the commercials for this place. I had not made any new beautiful, good-natured friends, because there were none to be found. “There’s nothing in the world like Action Park,” the commercials said. Indeed. There was nothing in the world like this place—if you wanted a staph infection.
I knew what had to be done. I could save this day. By riding Kamikaze.
Kamikaze, suspiciously absent from the TV commercials, was a waterslide conceived by someone with little regard for human life. Shaped like a giant curved L, the slide required its rider to climb a one-hundred-foot tower and, once at the top, enter a cage and cross his arms. The ride operator would then press a button, releasing the floor of the cage and dropping the rider into a free fall. Because the slide is completely vertical at first, the rider’s body does not touch the slide until it bends to 90 degrees and enters a series of shallow hills and approximately six inches of water.
“I’m going to ride that,” I said.
“What?” said Terri. She wasn’t incredulous; she couldn’t hear me because I was whispering. The words had slipped out of my mouth before I could suck them back in. Even with what little life experience I had, I knew Kamikaze was designed for grown men with diminished mental capacity, sort of an experiment in natural selection.
“He said he wants to ride that!” Jodi yapped.
“Absolutely not,” Terri said. “You’ll kill yourself. Let’s go home. Remember, it’s rush hour.”
“C’mon, Ter,” Mike said. “Let him ride it if he wants.” Great. Now Mike was involved. I really couldn’t tell if he was defending my budding manhood or if he finally saw his opportunity to destroy me and get my mother to himself.
Mom asked, “Do you really think it’s safe?”
“Take a look,” he answered. “Nobody’s been carried off on a stretcher yet.”
It was true. Grown men were indeed walking away after riding Kamikaze, but most of them stumbled as though they were recovering from a frying pan to the frontal cortex.
“OK. Just be careful,” Terri said.
“Yes,” Mike said, “be careful.” He was smiling the same smile he had when dropping Jodi and me off at our grandparents’ house for the weekend, except this time it was bigger, like he expected me to be gone for more than two days.
I started off to the steps of Kamikaze and heard Jodi call after me: “Don’t die!” Sweet kid.
I climbed the metal stairs, occasionally pausing to see if my family was looking. They were. I could see my mother holding her round belly with one hand and shielding her eyes from the sun with the other. Jodi was holding Mike’s hand.
Because so few people wanted to ride Kamikaze, there was no wait when I reached the top. A kid barely older than me told me to step into the cage and cross my arms. His name tag read KEVIN. “You’ll probably want to keep your legs together,” Kevin said without looking at me. He was reading a magazine about dirt bikes.
Keep my legs together? Why the hell was I doing this? To prove something to myself? To Mike? To my mother? My heart was pounding through my emaciated chest. I wondered if Kevin could see it vibrating like a berserk squirrel trapped behind my sternum. I could die right now or become paralyzed, I knew, and yet to climb back down those steps, with half of New Jersey watching, would have been more humiliating than to live the rest of my life with a torn spinal cord and the mental capacity of a parsnip.