We entered the park, full of glee, and headed to the food area. A catered dinner was part of the package deal, and our designated meal time was quickly nearing its end. We feasted on mass produced barbecue and cole slaw, and many attempts were made to give away the packaged hard-as-a-rock oatmeal raisin cookies that served as dessert. Not me, though. As soon as I realized the "raisins" were actually raisin-like flakes with no gelatinous consistency whatsoever, I ate every last bite.
Finally. Finally it was time for the main event -- roller coasters! I must start this part of the story by saying that I have nothing against roller coasters. I've even spent many days of my life being exhilarated by the ups and downs and arounds of the roller coasters at that very park.
It's the heights I dislike. More specifically, it's being hurled toward the ground from sixteen stories up at a high rate of speed that I dislike. Something about that is clearly unnatural and, dare I say, dangerous.
In addition, I dislike being spun in a circle at a high rate of speed. More specifically, I dislike feeling like I'm going to puke.
As I'm sure you can already tell, I was a barrel of fun at Six Flags.
Our group neared the first death coaster, and I kindly volunteered to hold everyone's stuff while muttering something about pawning all of their cell phones for cash if they plummeted to the afterlife on the crazy thing. I'm sure I threw in a "don't say I didn't warn you" somewhere in there, too.
Thus I became the "hold our bags" person. I was quite glad to take on this role because it removed some of the stigma of being a coward (although I like to think of it as being a rational human being). As the kids and other sponsors coasted up and down and around and up again, I manned fourteen or so backpacks, some cell phones, and a camera or two, all while convincing myself that I could totally win every arcade game in the park.
I studied the games. I marvelled at the giant prizes awarded for such simple feats as knocking milk bottles down with a baseball. I watched contestants and critiqued their performances in my head, silently cringing as they attempted an underhand throw when clearly an overhand throw was the only solution.
Yes, I held stuff and pondered my own imaginary arcade abilities for several hours.
As we began to exit the park, Tiffany reminisced about the year that her feet were so tired that the StuCo president gave her a piggy back ride all the way to the car. Of course, the natural progression of that thought was an announcement that we should have a piggy back race.
"Hogan and Caleb will carry us, and it will be SO FUN!" she announced. (Hogan and Caleb are our esteemed colleagues, often referred to as "the boys," and we love them.)
Then she asked Caleb which one of us he wanted.
I'm still pretending not to be offended that he picked her. Interestingly, people get Tiffany and me confused at school all the time, and at some point in the fall when we were getting healthy together we discovered that we not only have the exact same measurements, but we also weigh exactly the same -- somewhere around 105 if I remember correctly.
So Hogan got stuck with me. Since I am older than Tiffany, I decided that I likely had a greater gravitational pull because of my longer time on the earth, and this provided us with a handicap. However, Hogan is tall and has really long legs. I estimated that this made up for any issues presented by gravity. If we were going to race, then Hogan and I were going to RACE. In case you don't know, I like to win stuff.
Based on the footage you're about to see, a few more people joined in, too. I lost count because I didn't care. They were all going to be behind us anyway.
Luckily, one of the StuCo kids was prepared to witness our greatness, and now all of posterity is graced with this video. Hogan and I are the team on your right at the beginning of the race as you look at your computer. I don't want to sound bitter, but I think you can tell we got the bad lane.
That's right. Our dedication to winning caused us to falter, and I became a woman down. I thought instantly that I had broken my tailbone, but I couldn't stop laughing long enough to figure it out.
Boy was I wrong.
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