Get-to-Know-Jennie Week, Day 3

I do not like the following:

falling
heights
being tipped backwards or upside down
spinning

Can you guess where my least favorite place is? If you said “an amusement park” you would be right!  Pick just about any ride and I will most likely hate it.  Maybe I have inner ear problems, I don’t know.

 

Have you ever been to Cedar Point?  It’s in Ohio and is home to the most awesome roller coasters our country has to offer.  We lived a couple of hours away from Cedar Point growing up and went there at least once each summer.  My dad started out dragging me on all the rides.  After I dissolved in hysterics numerous times he got the clue that forcing me wasn’t working too well (this is a major theme running through my life.  Forcing Jennie is not advisable).  From about age 10 on, the family understood that I would stand by each ride’s exit and wave happily.  I was perfectly content to people-watch and eat cotton candy.

Sometimes I would be fooled into riding a scary ride.  The various “log rides” always suckered me in with those harmless-looking dugout canoes (no shoulder straps!  No seat belts!  They must be safe!)  But three minutes into the ride, once the canoe started it’s ascent (that chick-chick-chick as it inched toward death the drop almost gave me a heart attack every time), I was positive I’d made a hideous mistake.  Even the time that my mother pulled on a black garbage bag with a hole cut out for her face (to protect her perm, of course) didn’t distract me from imagining all sorts of deadly, very painful scenarios.

Every few years I go to an amusement park and think, “maybe it’s different now.  Maybe this time I’ll like roller coasters.”  But it’s not different.  I still hate the feeling of my stomach falling out of my body and my head almost exploding.  (Don’t even try to get me to ride those spinny carnival rides. No amount of cajoling/bribery/threats will get me anywhere near those things. I know my limits.)

I have come to accept my position as the official child-minder at every amusement park.  My job is to wait with all toddlers, scaredy-cats, and too-short-to-ride kids.  I teach them the fine art of standing near the exit, waving to Daddy. 

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9 thoughts on “Get-to-Know-Jennie Week, Day 3

  1. Well I think that the next time we head out to a theme park we will go with you and your family. I would have offered to take turns going on the rides or staying with the little ones, but since I now know this fun little fact about you I won't feel bad when you give up your turn on the rides over and over, doing the noble thing of watching the kids and eating the funnel cake.

    Does this mean that you do not like water slides too?

  2. Oh dear I am with Lonna. I would totally offer to stay with the kids and I would do my duty, but if there was someone willing to sit all the rides out I would feel bad for like a minute then go on all the rides. Or at least most of them, my headache threshold is getting lower as I get older.

  3. I've been to Cedar Point too. I'm from Columbus, OH. Thankfully I'm okay on rides for the most part (as long as I don't eat beforehand).

  4. Am enjoying getting to know you better! Great stuff! And I don't like heights, but l love to spin and get dizzy—-heh, heh.

  5. That was a great post.

    And just so you know, I have gradually found myself getting more scared of rides as I've gotten older and more sick from them when I go on them. It's very disappointing, after being the family dare devil for so long. When Kelly and I took your kids to Lagoon a couple years ago, we went on this ride that was a giant wheel, parallel to the ground, with little 2-person cabins hanging from it. As it spun, it went vertical. I loved that ride at Cedar Point (the Witches Wheel there). But Kelly and I were both sick for at least 2 or 3 hours after that and couldn't ride on any more rides the whole time. So sad!
    Anyway, I'm starting to get a much better feel for what it has been like to be you all these years.

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