07 June 2012

Silver Anniversary: Why Wave Pools Aren't Funny

To me, clowns aren't funny.  In fact, they're kind of scary.  I've wondered where this started, and I think it goes back to the time I went to the circus and a clown killed my dad.
--Jack Handy

Three things you should know on this fine Thursday.

1.  Charlie slept in his crib for the first time ever last night.  I've never been so proud of anything (well, I was pretty proud of these, and this, and this, and this) in all my life.   Amazeballs!

2.  Tomorrow is the last day of school.  No day in my life has ever gone by as slowly as today did.  Hopefully tomorrow goes by in a flash--until 3:00 when I will crack (rip?) open my celebratory box of wine.

3.  I remember random dates.  Like, sometimes I'll be all, "Hey, I do believe today is the 20th anniversary of Johnny Carson's last episode of The Tonight Show," or, "Isn't today the birthday of that one-eyed Jehovah's Witness I used to have a crush on?" and, sure enough, I'll be right.  It's weird.  I mean, I can't remember the endings to movies I've seen multiple times, but I can, on occasion, remember inane facts and dates.

So, anyway, today I was sitting at my desk, my ego all apuffed* because I'd gotten the baby to sleep in his crib, working extremely hard while my students worked extremely hard* and I realized that today was June 7.  "Hmph," I thought, "that's my parents' anniversary."  Now, we don't celebrate that anymore since they've been divorced for almost a decade, but then I remembered that on their anniversary in 1987--25 YEARS AGO TODAY!--we went to Carowinds, to the wave pool, and I narrowly escaped death.  I'm pretty sure I've talked about this on here before, but I was six years old and just splashing around in the wave pool when people started screaming like crazy and my mom started freaking out trying to get me out of the pool.  Two girls had been shot in the pool.  I don't think I knew that at the time, though.  I just remember that it took forever to get out of the park because they had to search everyone to try to find the gun or shooter.  Turned out it was a handful of redneck bozos shooting machine guns into the air like a 1/2 mile away.  Brilliant, assholes.

25 years ago today I almost died.  What'd you do 25 years ago?


*Yeah, that's totally a word.  I'm like a modern-day Shakespeare, huh?

*Because, duh, that's what you do on the last two days of school.  You DO NOT blow up beach balls and move all of the desks to the side of the room and play dodge ball, like some people I know.

3 comments:

  1. OMG I just blogged about what I was doing TWENTY FIVE years ago!! It seems that Larry was looking for his keys... Congrats on Charlie sleeping in his crib. i remember immense satisfaction in that arena myself...

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  2. Um, you do realize that Jack Handy stole that quote from me, right? That really is why I'm so afriad of clowns (and birds, but for a totally different reason). Also, sorry about you almost dying 25 years ago. I would have been really bummed. If I had known you then. . .
    - Shecky

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  3. Wow, that sounds really scary. Last summer I was at a water park with my 8-year old son on an outing with his swim team and we were in the wave pool. He started to wander a little deeper during a cycle when the waves were turned off then all of a sudden the waves were turned on and they were swelling over his head and he was going down. There were not enough life guards on duty to really take stock of who was there and I swam out to grab him as the waves swelled over my own head. I reached him, held on to him with a grip that would never let go and tried to calm both of us as I pulled him to the side, swallowing mouthfuls of water. It was scarier than hell and I maintain that those wave pools are very, very dangerous. Of course, add a couple of random shooters and you have a different kind of danger. Glad you lived to tell the tale.

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