Posts tagged comedy

This Tall To Ride

Remember that time the Harry Potter ride broke down, and stopped me directly in front of the still fully-functional dragon? I do.
I’ve always maintained that the experience that theme park rides provide are thrilling, not scary. What has always terrified me, since I was a child, was the underlying fact that these rides are machines with power switches. The original Back To The Future ride was awesome until I turned and saw that we were actually in The Matrix strapped into death machines painted to look like DeLoreans, being thrown about mercilessly at the hands of - most likely - people a lot like me. I immediately forgot everything I knew about breathing.
I was still breathing on the Harry Potter ride, much to the delight of the animatronic dragon directly in front of me that was providing about 90% of the gases I was inhaling. We sat there for about two minutes, unmoving, the dragon repeatedly breathing out bursts of smoke. Directly at me. And only me.
For reasons only God knows, my first inclination was to call out, “Mitch!!”
Maybe I thought since he’s read these books an ungodly number of times he would have advice for how I should be handling this situation. I was breathing in a lot of fog gas.
“Mitch!!”
A few seconds pass, then I hear:
“Seth! We’re at Hogwarts!”
I couldn’t remember whether Mitch had managed to get Bonine into his system this morning or not.
“Mitch!! I— (BLAST OF DRAGON BREATH) -ULLY FUNCTIONAL DRAGON!”
It hit me a minute into the experience that this situation was actually ideal. If the ride had stopped me during one of the video screen segments, having nothing in my peripheral vision to determine where I physically stood in space, I would have almost definitely forgotten everything I knew about breathing.
Once the ride started up again (right as I was getting my phone out of my pocket), this was no longer a ride about wizards. It was now an exhibition of various terrifying things that people never want to be stopped in front of. Huge spiders. Dementors. Velociraptors. Each stage of the ride brought me into a newer level of intimacy in my relationship with God.
At the end of the day, a random memory surfaced in my head from when I was really little and my family brought me to Disney World. My uncle Paul took me on the “Mister Toad’s Wild Ride” ride, which I was super-familiar with, having watched the cartoon about 17 thousand times. The ride’s cars were built to look like old automobiles, complete with a steering wheel in each.
I wanted the steering wheel seat, and Paul let me have it. I don’t know what I saw in that wheel standing in line that made me want it, but sitting down at it, I only saw one thing: responsibility. I was too young to realize that this car wasn’t actually depending on my steering, that it was just for novel decoration. I thought the lives of me, Paul, and the Kentucky newlyweds in the backseat were relying on my ability to maneuver this car through the cartoon obstacle course that was about to ensue.
That ride was one of the most stressful experiences of my childhood. I stepped into that car a boy, and stepped out a tangled pile of nerves.
I guess that’s why one man’s adventure is another man’s trauma. The first one hangs on and screams like a giddy child, while the second is too busy thinking he’s actually driving the car.