Word on the Street

And I can't stop spinning

My hometown of Jackson, New Jersey pretty much has two things: woods and a theme park. I grew up about 15 minutes away from Six Flags Great Adventure, and I've had season passes for there since before I was born. It was a place of a lot of firsts for me. It was the first place I rode an upside-down roller coaster. It was where I met my first girlfriend. When I was fifteen my dad gave me the sage-like advice that if I wanted a car, I needed to get a job. Given that everyone from my town has worked at Great Adventure at one point in their lives, I chose the life of a theme park attendant. I worked there for four summers and quickly moved from the bottom of the totem pole to one notch above the totem poll where they gave me a shiny gold-plated name tag and let me have 40% off of fudge and candy apples in the Fantasy World section of the park.

But then college came along and I moved away from my lower-middle management job at Great Adventure to pursue a college degree where I will once again hope to leave with a lower-middle management job. However, this past weekend, some friends of mine decided to trade the 100-degree heat of Philly in for a trip to Great Adventure, where it also was 100 degrees but we had the added bonus of having to pay $3.50 for a bottle of water. The trip back there taught me that I am getting old and I am no longer the kid who can ride Rolling Thunder seven times in a row without batting an eye. My nausea decided to kick it up an notch, and after each ride it was like the Battle of Monmouth going on in my digestive track. My friends kept telling me that I needed to ride though the pain, though.

Eight hours later and we were at the last coaster of the day; Batman: The Ride. It's a inverted coaster which throws you around like Ike beating up Tina. After that ride my spirit was broken and was replaced with a case of vertigo, and I slowly hobbled back to my friend's car. Luckily, coming out of the park, we saw perhaps the greatest thing ever: a giant Wawa with a gas station. I bought ginger ale and some Pepto Bismol while my friend told me to think of water and crabs while she proceeded to pinch me to take my mind off of the dizziness. Somehow, it worked, and I didn't puke. So what's the moral of the story? I'm not sure there is one here. I'll let you know when my head stops spinning and I re-establish equilibrium.

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