Six Flags

This past Saturday I went to Six Flags with Jericho as a Youth Group chaperone. Now, I have to say right off that I wasn't very excited about it. I was asked at the last minute when several other chaperones bailed, and a woman chaperone was needed. Considering that I don't like roller coasters or walking around in 100 degree heat, I was more than hesitant, but decided to help out and go anyway. If nothing else, I thought it would make some great blog material.

Of course, it did. As will any day when you spend most of your day just sitting and watching people. Here are some random "Six Flags" thoughts.

1. I'm not sure why this is, but Six Flags seems to bring out some strange fashion sense in people. Even older, parent-type people were walking the Six Flags Catwalk last weekend. It was as if they heard this silent beacon when they bought their tickets: "Give me your less-than-dressed, your tanktop-clad. Your underwear-showing masses yearning to expose themselves to the sun. Those with extra short-shorts worn way too low on the hips. Send these, the spiky-haired, barely-dressed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!" Or something like that.

2. You've got to wonder about those signs you see as you come to a ride indicating the wait times. I suppose they just got the park up and running one day, and assigned workers to wait in line. I'm guessing they had some kind of official "Wait Time" notebook, and they wrote down what time it was when they started, and then what time it was at every possible landmark on the way to the ride. Wow. You'd have to hate that job.

3. But not as much as you might hate the job of wearing a mascot-type costume on a one-hundred degree day. Or a super-thin spandex superhero costume in any kind of weather. Yikes.

4. There's just something wrong with a bumper car ride when you have to follow "one way" signs posted on the perimeter of the ride. What fun is that?

5. It definitely pays to keep your shoes tied at Six Flags if you're going to ride any rides at all. If not, you will end up looking like the boy I saw a couple of times Saturday at the park. I called him "One-Shoe-Guy". He obviously lost the other shoe on a roller coaster somewhere, and could not recover it. I'm pretty sure that there are rules at the park prohibiting barefootedness. However, if you have one shoe on, you probably aren't going to be placed in the barefoot category now, are you? It kind of makes wearing one shoe definitely as "glass-half-full" scenario. Which is lucky for "One-Shoe-Guy". He did, however, make it into the "Embarrassing" category.
6. It's always interesting to be sitting outside the exit area to a ride and watching this huge roller coaster ride that is flinging people around in upside down, lightening-fast ways. It's even stranger when you find yourself listening for your son's screams - I mean, manly yells - as it goes by because he's on it.

7. It's no wonder we saw smoke as we drove close to the park. Here's the map of the park, and here's the map of the raging, out-of-control fire burning. If you're having trouble locating the park on the fire map, it's just about where the red bed is on the left side of the big, red fire area. Yep, that close.

8. I didn't feel like I did any particularly "womanly" chaperone duties as the only adult woman there, but it did mean that it would have been hard to find some Tylenol if needed. I did, however, enjoy hanging out with the kids all day, since nothing bonds a group more than lots of heat, lots of walking, and lots of roller coasters.