The Things We Do For Our Kids!

We say we'll do anything for our children. Is it true?

Well, because my kids asked me to, I strapped myself into a rocket that launched me into the darkness at hundreds of miles per hour, jostling me around for at least 20 minutes before I was finally able to escape. (Some of those figures might be slightly exaggerated.)

We recently went to Disneyland, and my oldest children are of the awkward age (11 and almost 9) where they want to do some of the more adventuresome rides, but they don't quite feel comfortable doing them without an adult present. Unfortunately, I am the adult in that equation.

They wanted to ride Space Mountain. I had been on Space Mountain years ago and felt absolutely no desire to go on it ever again. I don't understand the appeal of it. The ride shoots off with incredible velocity into pitch blackness so you are unable to see when the twists, turns, and drops are coming, as the centripetal and/or centrifugal forces turn your whole being into some form of pudding.

Nope, count me out.

But, the kids really wanted to do it, and they wouldn't do it without an adult. So, there I was strapping myself into the rocket. The ride was worse than I remembered it. Usually you would say it was a good thing if the ride lasted longer than the line you had to wait in to get to it; not so with Space Mountain. It seemed to last forever.

When it finally stopped, I staggered off of the ride. The kids loved it. (Of course they did, they don't know any better.) As you exit the ride you come across a set of four or five monitors. Apparently, at a particularly jarring part of the ride a picture is taken of the riders that can be purchased and kept as a souvenir of your survival of this death trap. There is usually a crowd around these monitors, as people try to find the photo of themselves. As we approached, the entire group of people were not seeking out their own pictures. Instead, they were looking at one particular monitor, pointing at it and laughing. They were laughing at this:

Is that a man or a giant, troubled beet?

No one likes to be the object of ridicule, but when I saw the picture, I had to laugh, too. I looked like a giant, red-faced buffoon about to crash head-on into an 18-wheeler, while surrounded by carefree children with smiles on their faces. I would say I hate this picture, but it honestly sums up exactly how I felt during this ride.

And it proves that I would do anything for my children, even if it makes me look like a huge, frightened radish, and set me up to be ridiculed by a group of total strangers.





[Later that day, in an effort to reclaim some of the "cool Dad" points that I lost with the Space Mountain picture, I took the kids on Splash Mountain. (I actually like Splash Mountain. I can see what is coming, and it doesn't rattle my brain quite so much.) I knew when the Splash Mountain photo would be taken, so I tried to look slightly less frightening for it.

Not quite as scary.

No, it didn't make up for the horror of the Space Mountain picture, but it let them know that their Dad was still willing to do anything for them, even if it meant walking around the rest of the day looking like someone with some serious bladder control issues.]

(This photo was taken after Splash Mountain, not after Space Mountain!)