Water play

Yesterday I took my son and his friend to our county’s newest indoor pool. It has two large water slides, a lazy river, a not-so-lazy whirlpool and some fun high-pressure hydraulics that blast you when you walk under them. I went straight for the water slides. I walked up the three flights of steps and stood in line with kids less than half my height and one-fifth my age. I tried the tallest water side first. It’s thirty feet high. The tube starts inside the building at the very top of the steps, but then goes outside where it loops around and around before feeding back into the building, dumping the rider into a three foot deep plunge pool. What I didn’t know (or didn’t think about ahead of time) was that the slide was opaque. It was a relatively thin tube, completely enclosed and painted a dark green. It wasn’t until I was in the yaw of this thing and on my way down that I realized there was no light, that the ride was completely in the dark. There are some pretty basic rules of physics at play here. I was aware of them as my body twisted around the curves that I couldn’t see coming. Particularly, the law of physics pertaining to velocity and mass, the one that says “you big fat old man, you are going to travel a heck of a lot faster down this tube than the children.” My body was being thrown back and forth without warning. The adrenaline was flowing inside my body to match the roaring water in the tube. I saw the light at the end of the tunnel (literally!) just before I was thrown into the plunge tube with a tidal wave splash. I got up and collected myself. I think I even let out a loud whoop. A bunch of people stood watching. They were all smiling and laughing as I got up. People apparently like to watch the reactions of the riders, especially the first time riders, as they are spit out of the tube.

I didn’t go back on that ride again. I’m a big-time claustrophobic. I got into that tube the first time not knowing what I was in for, but you just couldn’t make me get in there again. I did, however, ride the other slide, the one you can see in the photograph, over and over again. On that one, you can at least see over your head, and down slope. I could prepare my back for what was coming next. It was a blast.

Speaking of my back, this morning I can twist and turn my body and feel every curve and drop of those water slides in my cranky old vertebrae. I feel all at once like a ten year old kid and a fifty year old man in that special head space where they happily coexist.