Riding Rollercoasters.

I have to back up a bit, and explain why riding roller coasters is a big deal to me, personally. I'm not big on telling personal stories on the blog, I'm always wondering when too much is too much, but without this background, the post about Universal sounds like I'm soo cool because I live in Orlanduh. So here's the story.

When I was a child, everything was Dangerous. This was something burned into me, every day in every way, by my mother. The concept that I am not smart enough to know what is bad for me was my father's domain. I can’t tell you how deep it goes. There is no such thing as a minor cut, or a mole that isn’t deadly, or a safe airplane trip. It’s ALL BAD. It’s the atmosphere in which I was steeped from birth. When I learned to turn a somersault, I was told I’d break my neck. I couldn't do a perfect somersault after that - I was too tense. I could do a perfect cartwheel too, until I was told I was bad for doing it. I couldn’t do a cartwheel after that, my body would curl inward, crab-like, fearing the broken neck I was told was sure to follow.

I’m still shocked that I learned to swim or ride a bike. But they could do both, so I was “allowed” to go only as far as they had. I learned to swim, but I would die if I got on the diving board. I could ride a bike, but Be Careful!

I had to fight to get a driver’s license. Is it any wonder that though I graduated high school at 16, and I wasn’t “allowed” to go to the college that accepted me, and was presented as my only option with a sheltered women’s college in the mountains with no decent-sized town within 50 miles, I put my foot down for the first time and said no?

I chose to go to the state school, but I had to pick the major my father wanted. Something Sensible, at which I had no natural ability or interest. I quit the state school a year later. I worked, met my late husband. We moved to California. I wanted to get the hell away. We got married too young and with no money or actual life plan, and by some miracle it wasn’t a disaster. We landed in Florida, I went back to school, chose a default major, something I could use to get a job, graduated with two (great) kids underfoot and a husband on the road all the time and finished up my degree working at a downtown law firm, running Daisy Girl Scouts and attending Cub Scout meetings, with a litter of golden retrievers at home, and still graduated above a 3.5 GPA and kept it all together. I look back and wonder how the hell I did. But that’s how I got where I am. And I’ve been doing that job ever since, in various venues. That’s how I “chose” my career path. It wasn’t the path of least resistance, it was the path of most opportunity given the limited choices.

I’m good at what I do, I know I am. I have heard it from everybody I work with – but that doesn’t make it what I want to do. But I digress… back to roller coasters.

Roller coasters were my secret vice. I rode them with Boys. In secret. For a long time. The boyfriend du jour and I would go to an amusement park and ride the rides, and I never told my parents. Just like when I tiptoed in at 4 a.m. from a night clubbing in the city. They may have known about that, though they never said so, but they didn’t know about the roller coasters. Because I wasn't going to break my neck at The Bayou, but roller coasters? Deadly!

Then I got married, headed to California, and I rode roller coasters with my husband. Then years later I rode them with my kids in Florida, and I still didn’t tell my mother that I rode roller coasters, or took her grandchildren on them, because, you know, people DIE on roller coasters. Ask my mother.

(And shit, we have that whole Mission Space or whatever it’s called thing at Disney that is not really a roller coaster but on which a couple of people with undiagnosed pre-existing conditions died, to prove that it is all TRUE! That’s the great cosmic joke of the paranoid fears - there is always something that justifies them, even if it’s as remote as being hit by lightning.)

I will be 48 next month, my mother is 80.

I made the mistake, a couple of weeks ago, of telling her about my office outing to Animal Kingdom, and how great the Everest ride was. It is an awesomely cool roller coaster. You climb so high, outside the mountain, the view is endless, because Florida is very flat. On a clear day you can see Georgia. (exaggerating, but not by much) The ride is great. It's very safe, I had no feeling at any time that I was risking my life. It's FUN.

“Oh My GOD!!!! How could you do that? Don’t DO THAT! It’s too DANGEROUS!!!”

I’ll be 48 next month. I buried my husband 3 years ago and got through it. I’ve had jobs my parents can’t understand even if I explain them. I’ve survived and done and experienced a lot, in a mundane, middle class, corporate dweebish way.

I am not glamorous or exciting, but the generational issues alone mean I’ve done things my parents can’t put into any frame of reference. Though God knows my father would try, because until about a year or two ago, I was still a dumb kid who didn’t know anything – then his health changed and I miraculously got smarter. But I’m still not “allowed” to ride a roller coaster. She gets upset and yells at me. I’m 48, and she’s 80.

So getting on the Hulk and going through those upside down insanely fast spins? That is actively spitting in the face of my upbringing. And that is why it so so damn cool. And why I won't bother to tell my mother. Because I will not live my life afraid of the random boogeyman, and I'm so sorry they did.

I wear my seat belt and I take my vitamins, but I know for a goddamn fact that random bad shit has nothing to do with those things. I watched my husband die of something the equivalent of getting hit by a meteor.

And I don’t want to be 80 and on oxygen and never have gotten on the damn roller coaster because they are Too Scary. So I’ll tell them we went to the park and saw the cousins, but I’ll leave out the cool parts, about the margarita making tap and the Hulk. And it makes me sad, even now, at my age, that I have to leave out the fun parts of life when I talk to my own parents. But it has ever been thus.

And this is my philosophy of life: Just Ride the Roller Coaster.