Our weekend camping trip to visit the waterpark was as one would expect. With two little ones, I was prepared for a day in the sun, with varying degrees of kiddie pool, wave pool, fountains, overpriced food, superfluous trips to the locker and/or car for various and sundry accessories.
I did not, however, expect to encounter any adult-sized waterslides.
I was lulled into complacency by the signage, I now realize. Scattered throughout the park - at a number of different heights and angles, in an Orwellian attempt to be continuously observed - were the most reassuring signs. Signs that claimed you must be 48" to ride the big slides. No one under 48" would dare ride the big slides. The thought of a sub-48er riding a super-48 slide was taboo, profane, anathema, unthinkable.
Except to my boy and my wife, that is.
"Alex wants to ride one of the big slides," Michelle informed me. She pointed to a trio of large tan waterslides, with loops and twirls but a relatively shallow grade. "Those don't look too bad. Maybe he's allowed on those."
I blinked. "He can't. He's too little." It was so obvious. He's not 48 inches. He's barely 48
months.
"I've seen little ones come down them, I think. Ask the lifeguard."
Maybe she hadn't seen the signs. "What? No. He's ... didn't you see the sign? 48 inches." How could she not have seen the signs? They might as well have just branded us at the park entry.
Sigh. At me. "Just ask a lifeguard. They'll just say 'no' if you're right, right?"
Strangely, despite all historical evidence to the contrary, that sounded right to me.
I waded across the kiddie pool where I spied an orange flutterboard, sunglasses, sun-bleached hair and bright red bathing suit. En route, I passed an overly-cheerful pink whale and a strange frog slide - a line of children climbed into its butt and slid down its firetruck-red tongue, like some insectoid meal the amphibian regurgitated after eating backwards and decided
this doesn't agree with my digestion. Reaching the lifeguard, I excused myself and asked, "My son, he's four years old, he'd like to go down one of the large tan slides over there, but he's not 48 inches tall, so he's not allowed because it's too dangerous, right?"
It never hurts to stack the deck a little.
She smiled, "Oh, sure he can," and the water in the kiddie pool got a little warmer out of fear. She proceeded to explain that younger kids rode the slides quite often and that there really was no danger, but my mind had already tuned to another channel. Perhaps I got my signals crossed. Perhaps I had made her think I wanted him to slide down the big slides. I was probably distracted by that obscene frog. Even then, its tongue seemed to follow me no matter where I was in the pool.
Then, she gave me a trump card that solved the whole problem: for safety reasons, they do not allow people - even parents and children - to slide together on the 'twister' slides, and each person has to slide by themselves. She explained that the normal routine for a parent and a young child was for the parent to slide first, then wait in the exit pool at the base of the slide and catch the child as they exited. It didn't matter. I heard what I needed to kill the whole thing: Alex would have to slide alone.
I waded back across the kiddie pool to Michelle, Alex, and Zach, and explained my understanding of the situation. I don't remember my exact words, but I'm sure my explanation was accurate yet fraught with foreboding and gloom. I finished by being very frank with Alex, saying, "So, yes, you can go down the grown-up slide, but Daddy has to go down first and you have to go all -by - yourself." I let this sink in with a meaningful pause. "Now, are you sure you want to try?"
He said "Yes." Then shouted "Yippee!"
This is an example of hubris.I managed a better look at the slides while we waited in the lethargic lineup at the summit. The 'twister' slides are long, shallow-grade waterslides that empty into a pool about 4 feet deep. The three slides are positioned in such a way to afford a view of the exit pool to a lifeguard stationed at the launching pad; a second lifeguard, stationed at the exit pool, can provide immediate assistance to sliders if necessary, as well as signal trouble to his fellow above. Once a slider hits the bottom and gets his footing, the lifeguard at the summit allows the next person in line to begin sliding.
By the time I sit down in the "on deck" position, I was past most of my worry. I was addicted to water slides when I was younger, despite not being a strong swimmer, so I can understand Alex's desire to try them. I remember back in '86, my family took a vacation where we drove across Canada from New Brunswick to British Columbia, and I think we stopped at every single water park both coming and going. I was waterlogged for weeks. The lifeguard signaled for me to go while answering some question for my wife. I pushed off, laid back, began to pick up a little momentum, and actually thought to myself, "This should be fun. I hope he likes it."
Just before I get around the first turn, I hear my wife call out behind me, "Catch Zach, too!"
I did not enjoy that slide. Alex was just over 4 years old, and, deep down, I knew he'd be okay. Worst case, he'd get scared on his way down and hate waterslides for some brief period of time. But Zach is only 2 and a half, and he's
nowhere near 48 inches tall!As I twisted and turned, I passed through a tunnel in the slide, thinking, "They'll be scared to death in the pitch black. We're doomed. Well, it's not really black. It's just dark. I guess it's not really dark, more like dim. I can still see." By the time I decided on 'dim', I was well out of the tunnel.
Worry turned to fear in the last 20 feet of the slide. Alex picked which of the three twister slides he wanted to try, and, as luck would have it, he chose the only one with a short dip at the end of its run. The final segment involved a pitch down at about a 45 degree angle which was just enough to put your heart in your throat and your lunch in your swimming trunks if you weren't expecting it. Down I went, thinking, "This is going to scare the hell out of them."
There was nothing I could do. I got my footing, wiped the water out of my eyes, and looked back to the summit. There's no way I could signal the lifeguard and stop Alex's descent. Or Zach's, for that matter. All I could do was stand at the foot of the slide and hope they were ready.
After a few moments, at the point where the slide dipped steeply, there was Alex. He was sitting up, hands out to his sides on the slide to maintain his balance, smiling. I guess he handled the tunnel without any problems. Then he crested the ridge, and plunged down the end of the slide. And I'd swear on a stack of bibles that his eyes grew bigger and rounder with every foot he dropped toward the pool.
He hit the water and skimmed along its surface (the fact that I sunk like a rock is distressing, and fodder for further investigation). I plucked him of the surface before he lost skimming velocity, and sat him on the edge of the pool. He looked like a blood loss victim going into shock. "Are you okay, little man?" I asked with some urgency. His eyes, shrinking now, swiveled to my face. Recognition. "Are you okay?" I asked again. "Was that ... fun?"
"YYEESS!!" he cheered. "Can we do it again?!"
There's no accounting for some people. Or their kids.
Zach arrived shortly thereafter, and with not quite the same demeanor. We saw feet, first. He was coming down on his belly, feet first, and I saw what I thought was terror in those little eyes peering over his shoulder. Then, the dip, just like his brother. Luckily, I managed to snatch him from the surface just as fast and sat him next to Alex on the side of the pool.
"You okay, little man?" He was shivering, and it was a very warm summer day. "Was that fun?"
His response: "N-n-n-n-n-no." That's my boy.
I was somewhat vindicated by watching Michelle's slide. She, too, was unaware of the surprise ending of the slide, and it extricated a little surprised scream from her during the final plunge. I'd like to smugly think that the scream meant, "Had I know this was here, I would never have let the kids slide down."
But I haven't asked her, since it might not.
