Deep Shame at Theme Parks

Deep Shame at Theme Parks

I want to begin by writing I got the best sleep last night, nine plus hours! It was amazing. I think I was so incredibly shook (is that how the cool kids say it?) by the fact that school will be closing for good for the year that my sadness really amped up the melatonin factor. Either way, I am grateful for the extra zzzz. In other news, my blog has reached almost 1,000 hits. So by my count, thats 900 times my mom has viewed it and 100 by everyone else. Thanks Mom, thanks everyone else. When I look on the analytics it says the bounce rate is ____. I asked Joe what a bounce rate is? I thought it was how many times you jump close to your kid on a trampoline and how many times they subsequently bounce away after that. He said no, it is how quickly someone clicks onto your page , reads something they don’t like and completely bounces to the next. Of course, he said it so nonchalantly, like everything he says, with no emotion mixed in. At least he wears the Clark Kent sexy glasses.

Wow, I got way off topic there. Alright so let’s talk vacations. It’s a good time too, since we will never go on one again right? I love Disney with my Mickey infused soul and every year since my son turned two, we have been blessed to visit that place of dreamlike sparkle and childlike euphoria. My preference is and always will be Magic Kingdom. It’s a Small World, Peter Pan Ride. Getting run over by the afternoon parade while needing new dental work because someone hit you in the face with their selfie stick. There is absolutely nothing like it. However, my husband likes to deviate from Magic Kingdom because he is a rollercoaster man and we go during February Break, so on occasion, I’ll allow it.

One such trip a few years back, when I was still worried about pleasing people and go with the flow, I blindly accepted an invite to on the ride Space Adventure at Epcot with my husband and my sister in law and our shared children. I had nervous energy about this ride, I don’t like spinning, I don’t like moving fast, I don’t even much like simulations. Well you full blown idiot, why did you get in this line you might ask? You guys! YOU GUYS my husband and my sister in line, they were applying the pressure big time. “Come on, Taryn, it’s one ride. The kids won’t have an adult to sit beside. THEY NEED AN ADULT TO SIT WITH”. In my mind I am thinking, who cares if the kids have an adult to sit with? like who gives a flying f? I have to eat store brand macaroni and cheese for the month following this, because I flew their broke assess to this spot so that they could “pretend” to go into outer space while I white knuckle it beside them? Ummm No. BUTTTTT, I didn’t know what I know now and so I really succumbed to the pressure. I kickstanded that stroller, I disengaged with my fanny pack and I got into that line. Can we stop for a second? You don’t really think I have a fanny pack do you? If you think that, please unsubscribe to this blog immediately.

Completely joking, I did use to own a fanny pack when I was 8 and just like all fashion circles, it’s making it’s way around again and I will rock it with a little extra fanny mixed in. SO anywho, we enter this ride and at one juncture of the ride there is a sign that says essentially, go left if you want to keep your lunch in your belly and go right, if you would just like to be tortured until you die. Joe and Amy immediately go right. They just keep marching with our offspring, like this was our path now. I felt like we were leading some kind of Manson Cult and we had the impressionables following right behind. I wanted to shout get out the line kids, you still have time. A few times, I considered yelling, “I’ve been TAKEN”, as I did feel so completely kidnapped in this setting.

As my feelings of dread grew, we approached the part of the ride where you have to sit down and get strapped in. I’m a teeny bit claustrophobic. No scratch that, I’m a lot of bit claustrophobic. The only time I have even wanted to be strapped down is when I had gained an enormous amount of poundage and was about to have a c section with my son. Yes something better be holding on to these legs so I don’t fall off the table. Other than that, just no. So right there, they are strapping us down and the Disney attendant, dressed in all the bright stripes and a paid and forced smile said , “mam you are going to have to lose the sunglasses”. For those that know me, I don’t lose the sunglasses. The sun glassses are basically apart of me now. They do so many jobs. They first and foremost protect my eye balls, but they also hide my resting bitch face, my squinty what the f did you just say eyes, my aloof I don’t want to see or talk to that person eyes, they are also a shield for spit, snot or vomit and I am around kids a lot in my life. So when that attendant said lose the sunglasses, I felt like Ryan in that scene of the Office when they are trivia and they tell him he can’t have his phone and he leaves the scene saying I want to be with my phone. I wanted to be with my sunglasses.

But I did the adult thing, I let them take my sunglasses and I think my niece was sitting next to me on the left and my daughter on the right. I feel so badly they were placed with me and introduced to this part of the world with me as their guide. Soon after all lights were shut off and I thought and please correct me if I”m wrong because it’s been a minute, but I thought I heard that actor who plays Lieutenant Dan start talking. That did give me some piece of mind, which was immediately ripped away as we started our ascent into space. They say when you go through trauma your brain doesn’t remember all the details so it can protect itself. I do apologize for not remember all the details of this hell ride into space, but I think my brain went all Shut Down Sheila on me just to save grace. At one point of the ride, when we were really spinning, shaking, twisting, jolting, choose any verb you want. I held my nieces small hand in mine and said “it’s going to be fine Abby, it’s almost over”. I think she squeezed mine back and said “I’m fine Auntie”. My God, how low the mighty have fallen, when you are asking a five-year-old to calm you in your darkest hour.

When the ride was over I was so incredibly nauseous, so dizzy that I thought I wouldn’t be able to stand up straight. I was able to make it to the exit and past the gift store where I collapsed against a bench and put my head between my knees. It was like the aftershock of drinking the worst, cheapest liquor you have ever consumed, while also riding the Teacups at FunTown 3 or 4 times in a row. I. Couldn’t. Even. Hang. At one point I heard families going by. They had kiddos who were 8 and 10. None of them phased at all. I overheard the Mom say “that’s too bad, she had too much to drink in Mexico”. The Dad responded with , “you would think she could hold it together, since her kids were with her”. I could not even lift my color drained face to face them my readers, because to fight, meant I would also have to vomit. What I would have said to them is, no booze did this to me, Mickey Mouse himself , he did this, he put me here.

Even in telling this sad, sad story of myself on vacation and feeling the shame for a second time, it does make me miss the heck out of Disney. Stay safe my Disney loving buddies, stay apart, social distance, so we can get back on these rides and hate ourselves once more.