Topic: Amusement Parks

Author: Chris Dunn

Sometimes I’m surprised I’m a alive. If you judge my upbringing by modern standards, I should been dead several times over, and my parents should’ve been locked up. I hear horror stories about parents today being separated from their children because they let them walk home from school alone, or dare to let them play outside without a helmet. I never owned a helmet. I walked to and from school every day. I carted my big wheel up to fifth court to go riding with friends at age 6. “Come home when the street lights come on,” my mother would say. That was the only rule. Are things just more dangerous now? Statistics would seem to indicate otherwise. Maybe it’s our constant diet of cop-dramas which insist that there are so many serial killers loose in the world, that there exist specialized crews of incredibly attractive people flying around the country in jets just to thwart them. Or maybe it’s the 24-hour news cycle, leading with bleeding in our faces for 38 years. Whatever the cause for modern day hysteria, all I know is my upbringing was different.

Take for example the time we went to Toronto. It’s was a long time ago, in a land far away, back when a 7-hour drive seemed like a lifetime. Border security was a brief nod for a family of five back in ’75, even for a long-haired, hippy-type like my father. Just a quick, “What’s your purpose here today, eh?” and we were welcomed to Canada. I don’t remember many of the particulars of our visit. I think we were visiting friends, and we probably stayed with them. Maybe there was a motel with a pool and a game room. The farther back I got the more the trips blend together in my mind to become a pleasant collage of smiles and travel, so it’s hard to say, and this trip happened when I was 7, so it’s particularly vague. What I do remember outside of the smiling border agent, was we went to an amusement park.

Now, I don’t recall the name of the place or who we went with, but I do remember my realization upon arrival that this place wasn’t like King’s Island. There weren’t a half dozen roller coasters to choose from and there wasn’t any product/ride fusion; no Smurf’s Adventure, no Days of Thunder Action Theater. This place was more of an adventure/water park - rope bridges, zip lines, pools and water attractions – those kinds of things. So, a little disappointment, but still, we were in a foreign land in a park. It beat a day at school hands down!

We hadn’t brought swim suits, so the water park portion was out, so it was going to be a day of ropes and climbing. I’m sure we had a picnic lunch with us – we always had a picnic lunch – PB&Js where the jelly had soaked through the bread and the whole thing had gotten warm in summer sun. As disgusting as that might be, we weren’t paying those crazy Canadian theme park prices! The upside to lunch is there would often be a coke, if we could swing it. Can you believe there was a time when refills weren’t free?! Sorry, that’s another story.

Now, at some point, somehow, I got separated from the group. Maybe I wandered off. Maybe I was sent off in my sister’s care and we lost each other. Or, most likely, I was given leave to enter one of the rope bridge areas and told to come back when I was through having fun. Left to my own devices, I remember wandering and climbing and marveling at the insanely dangerous nature of the place. There were kids everywhere! Climbing and crawling, pushing and scratching, all with zero supervision. Wooden planks supported by thick knots of brown, coarse rope suspended over harrowing drops while dozens of kids charged about heedless of anything but their own enjoyment.

Other than a terrifying montage of near death experiences, only a few elements from that day stick out. I remember climbing up a cargo net to reach a higher level. The fibers of the rope were scratchy and cut into my hands leaving behind the stench of thousands who had come before me. Three times I quit the ascent only to be faced with the realization that there was nowhere else to go. You had to go forward to get back. The amazing power of desperation propelled me to the top.

Then, I recall a well. A hole was cut in the wooden floor and from it hung suspended a large net of the thick rope – a single escape rope dangled in the middle. One glance at the writhing mass of limbs trapped below and I knew, this was not for me. How were you supposed to escape once you went down? How were you supposed to breathe with all those other kids pushing and pulling, screaming and crushing you? My imagination placed me down among them and I shuddered, trapped in my own horrific vision until a helpful stranger played the old, pretend-to-push-you game. Haha, right? That one’s always funny. But it jolted me out of my stunned fascination, and I beat a hasty retreat before someone decided to go through with the jest for real.

It was about this time, that I wanted out, and with that thought came the realization that I was lost - lost and alone in some crazy, stupid-add Canadian rope park! I didn’t cry. Well, I probably cried a little, but no one saw me, so it didn’t count. Reasoning it out, I determined that wherever my parents were, it wouldn’t be anywhere near this place, and the only way out of this rope-and-kid horror show was to keep moving. Setting my direction forward and my feet to one step after the other, I stomped, climbed, crawled and clawed my way back to concrete paths and all too infrequent shade trees. No one I recognized was in sight.

I knew what I was supposed to do. My mother had given me the talk. “If you’re ever lost, go find an adult, preferably a policeman, tell them your name and that you’re lost, and they’ll help you find us.” But screw that noise! That meant talking to strangers. I’d rather wander for hours and possibly starve to death than initiate contact with someone I didn’t know. Plus, after what I’d already been through, locating a small family in a crowded park seemed a breeze. Thankful for solid ground beneath my feet, I followed the paths around the park looking for landmarks that seemed familiar. At one point, I wandered too close to the water park and a kid soaked my leg with some water-shooting dolphin thing. The embarrassment at my mistreatment was outweighed by the relief the cool water provided. His attack altered my course, and amazingly that course correction put me on a path to find my family in short order.

“Chris! Where have you been?”

A flood of images with biting ropes and clawing hands leapt to my mind, but my family didn’t wait to hear my answer. They just snatched me up and dragged me to the picnic area. A sticky PB&J and a Coca-Cola thick with syrup brought out the bees in force, but they didn’t scare me like they once had, not after the things I had seen…