Six Flags

     I was fourteen.

     A couple of close relatives and I went to Six Flags Magic Mountain.

     I learned a few things that day.

     Prior to that visit to Six Flags, I had been on only two roller coasters in my entire life both of which were at Lagoon. Also, neither of them should count since they were sissy coasters (the white roller coaster isn't exactly a dreamboat).

     So there I was, with next to no experience riding roller coasters. Not only that, but I seemed to carry this extreme fear of heights.

     Buuuuuuut the friend of my aunt who was with us happened to be attractive, and I somehow found myself convinced to go on a roller coaster without question.

     The one she had in mind was apparently brand new, elaborate, and terrifying.  It was called X4 I think. I don't really remember the name too well. I do remember, however, watching the riders ahead of me being swooped along a metal platform of death.

     I was contemplating simply ditching out, but this was the first ride! I couldn't skip when we'd only just began. So I got on.

     If you haven't been on the ride, I'll describe it for you.

     You start in an upright position when you get strapped in. As soon as the OK is given to kill everyone, the seats are put into this wobbly state of pivoting on the connections. Then you slowly rise up a slope backwards, with a perfect view of the concrete that will smash your face in if your harness is faulty.

     And then the descent begins. For the entire ride you're going backwards. That doesn't sound too bad, but keep in mind that on top of not seeing where you're going, you are being jerked in random directions, twisting in more ways than a pretzel doing yoga on steroids, being dragged upside down by your butt essentially, and then onto your eyebrows have bursts of flame that were, quite possibly, the cause of several good mens' baldness.

     Funny thing was, looking back, there wasn't any fear present. My reasoning behind this is that because there was so much that was going on at once, my senses were on overload, meaning there wasn't any room for fear.

     So the lesson I learned from that was that if you are going to an amusement park, ride the "scariest" ride first, since everything else will be cake after it.

     Later on in the day, I began to notice that lots of people were carrying around this same object.

     A freakin' Rastafarian banana. I'm not sure what it was, but something primal inside of me desired so strongly to obtain one of these abominations. Low on cash, I settled for the best idea I could think of.

     In a lot of places, there are those booths where they have to guess your weight, birthday, etc. And if they're off by so much, you claim a prize.

     After spotting out a booth that carried the ugly bananas, I stepped up and asked the guy to guess my age.

     I may have been fourteen, but I had some stubble. Not much, but enough. It also helped that I was wearing sunglasses.

     What he said was, "Well you're either a lot older than you look, or a lot younger."

     So at this point, he has about a fifty fifty chance.

     "I'll go with twenty-four."

     Needless to say, I got my banana.

    What I learned was that if you have some kind of advantage to ruthlessly exploit, do so with caution. I may have claimed my prize, but the shamedfaceness that the poor guy had to put up with was awful.