You must be THIS tall to break my heart
Posted
July 3, 2008 at
3:29 pm by
Kymberly
Hanging upside down at 45 mph is definitely NOT the time to start fretting about your child’s hip-to-shoulder ratio.
I mean, if I were going to become obsessed with whether or not the overhead restraint system on a roller coaster could ACTUALLY prevent my child from plummeting headfirst to the earth, it would have made a LOT more sense to consider that with our feet planted firmly on the ground.
Instead, we were winging our way skyward at startling speeds. The people, and midway, below were receding like ants as the coaster climbed up and away. Honestly, I think I saw cloud cover.
This was the first time I had ridden a coaster with the mindset firmly set less on “thrill-seeking fun lover” and more “terrified overprotective mom.”
You see, when it’s YOU getting on the ride you have a rather savoir-faire attitude about the whole thing. It’s safe, it’s bolted down, and it’s inspected, right?
That trickle of fear as your lap bar locks you in place is part of the fun. That lighthearted moment when entertaining ride operators opine that they “hope” to see you back in 90 seconds is all part of the theater.
That momentous climb and stomach-dropping descent is all part and parcel of the adrenaline rush you came for.
Risk. Then they snapped the restraint bar over my “baby” and I just about lost my mind. This is the child I obsessively buckled into a car seat inside an airbag-laden minivan to drive 25 mph through the village.
Yet I was now allowing a teenager with a laminated badge to buckle him in preparation of being hurtled through the air at warp speeds with our feet dangling below. How does that make any sense?
Our son first expressed an interest in roller coasters last summer. Because he was 9 and of average height, I still had a little wiggle room (as did he). He did not, thank the Lord, meet the height requirements.
Fifty-two inches tall is the magic number for all the really good, high-velocity, rip-the-flesh-from-your-face roller coasters. This is crazy because any mother knows that 52 inches is not tall at all.
I would have preferred it be something a bit more substantial, say 7 feet or 8 feet.
Even before the “train” (as they coyly call roller coasters because “hurtling death cars of doom” didn’t test well) rolled out of the station, I knew we (OK, I) had made a terrible mistake.
As we hurtled through the space-time continuum, I could think only of tragic miscalculations. Did they mean 52 inches for anyone, or just those husky kids I’m always reading about? My kid is skinny. What if he slips out? He’s so small, after all. He still has a safety rail on his bunk bed for Pete’s sake!
I don’t think I breathed for the two-minute duration of the ride. Well, that’s not technically true; I did take a couple of deep breaths, primarily to provide ample oxygen for my screaming. I am not what you call a good role model.
Then, just as quickly as it began — it was over. As the car came to the much-ballyhooed “complete and final stop,” the teenage ride operator and resident sadist assured us we could now put our arms and legs outside the car if we so desired. As if I could unclench my white knuckles from around that restraint bar.
He’s funny, that kid. Finally free of the g-force, I could look left and see my child again. His eyes were closed and his face was pale. Climbing out of the car on shaky legs, he clutched my hand, pulling me forward as we nearly jogged down the ramp back to safety.
We were leaving that terrible steel beast in the dust! We were nearly free of the terrifying experience, my baby and I.
I said as much with the opinion that I was sure glad that was over. Turning to me, still shaky, his eyes opened wider and a huge grin split across his face: “That was awesome, Mom! Let’s do it AGAIN!”
Six “agains” later, our son was essentially fearless.
Grown. Leaving the park that night, the lights on that big steel monster twinkling behind us, I took note of a very prophetic sign: “Lost and Found is Located at Guest Relations” and I thought how wrong they really were.
Lost is the heart of a mother who arrived with a little boy and left with a “big kid” who is braver than she. Found is the courage of one small(ish) boy who arrived that morning having attained exactly 52 inches and left feeling 10 feet tall.
Tags: age, amusement, child, Family, fear, height, Parenting, risk, roller-coaster, son, worry |
6 Responses to “You must be THIS tall to break my heart”
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1. Rita said:
July 3, 2008 @ 8:24 pm
Oh, God, I know. I have been there. But to make it worse, my daughter (the second-born) had a near miss once. It was the summer between k and 1st grade, so she was six. It was that ride we used to call the octopus. It goes by different names at different parks, but you know, it has all the arms that go up and down and at the end of each arm is a little car that spins a little. This daughter has always been small for her age (in the 0th percentile for weight, her weight is charted on its own curve about an inch below the differently shaded actual graph), but she met the height requirement for this ride. They buckled us in together (thankfully it was me and not her father or anyone else), and I placed an overly protective arm around her shoulder. The ride started and we zoomed up and I felt her straining against my arm, so I applied pressure on her and if I hadn’t, she would have just kept rising right out of that seat. See, the bar across our lap didn’t come close to restraining her, she would have just slid right out of it. So, for the duration of the ride, it was MY ARM holding on to her (OK, after that first UP I put both arms around her) that kept her inside the ride.
I’ve been freakishly over-protective ever since, demanding that she reach the average WEIGHT for the height requirements. So, if a ride says 53 inches, then I will look up what the average weight is for a person that is 53 inches tall and she can ride those rides when she reaches that weight as well as the height.
Sometimes over-protective turns out to be just-the-right-amount-protective.
2. Kymberly Foster Seabolt said:
July 4, 2008 @ 7:44 am
Same scenario only it was me (probably 10 or 11?) with my younger cousin (maybe 7?) And we both felt ourselves coming up and OUT of that bar.
Your advice to make sure we know what WEIGHT goes along with that “average height” is well-founded.
3. Rita said:
July 4, 2008 @ 11:59 am
Wow, that is scary, Kymberly. You just can’t be too safe with those rides.
I know, really everyone always has fun and walks away unscathed by it, but I just have a hard time letting my kids on those rides, for all the reasons you wrote about. It’s just scary, not thrilling, when it’s your kids. And, sadly, they love it. I haven’t had a kid yet who says, “Yeah, you know, that ride was too scary, I think I’ll stick to the carousel from now on, mom.” Trips to the amusement park are followed by evenings with the booze for me.
4. Jessica said:
July 4, 2008 @ 4:16 pm
Our kids are really, really tall for their age, so my little guy, last year at age 4, was tall enough to ride The Demon roller coaster. Prescott went with him because I don’t do coasters, and I was freaking out. I remember my brother riding the same coaster 20 years ago and the over the head harness lock never locked in place so he had to hold it down the entire time. I told Prescott to check it and to keep his arm against him but he said that “G” did get bounced around a lot.
Do you ladies know that those rides aren’t even regulated??? I saw that on Dateline or 20/20 after that little girls feet were amputated by that ride last year at Great America. The government thinks it’s okay for them to self regulate. Now, I’m not a big regulations person, but when it comes to your life I sure as hell am! That’s some scare shit if you ask me.
5. Kymberly Foster Seabolt said:
July 6, 2008 @ 10:10 am
If it’s just the two teeth between them grizzled carnies known as Pork Chop and Bones, I’m not too sure about that.
6. Allison G. said:
July 7, 2008 @ 11:27 am
When I was a kid, my sister and I went on the ride that’s like a boat/viking ship that goes way up high one way, then way up high the other way. I don’t know if I met the height requirement or not (no one stopped me if I was too small anyway). The lap bar locked down and there was a good 4 or 5 inches between it and my legs. Once the ride got into full speed/height, I felt myself lifting up and sliding! I was screeching like mad, and my sister and the man ahead of us were laughing so hard! The only thing I could do to stabilize myself was to slip down to the floor and brace myself between the seat and the back of the next seat and push up on the lap bar. I was terrified!
My 6 year old last year really started wanting to go on coasters and bigger rides. And Dh let our 2 year old (yes, 2) go on the little kiddie coasters with him, and he taught her to put her hands in the air and scream “Yahoo!”
Yikes!