Tunnel slides

I remember when I was young and I loved waterslides.  I still love waterslides today but I’m finding that they are a whole new experience when one gets older.

My favorites are the open slides with lots of twists and turns.  I have no interest in the slide that has a 90 degree drop.  Life can be terrifying enough without adding extra danger.  And I am also not interested in these new slides where everyone ends up in a bowl and falls out a hole in the middle.  It just seems like those things should be made for balls and pennies, not people.

But to my surprise, the tube/tunnel slides that I always loved as a kid have become terrifying.  I decided to go down the tunnel slide this summer because it had a shorter line. Do you know what I discovered?  The older you are, the more frightening it is to be somewhere dark, going at a high speed and not knowing where it will ever end.  As a kid, I never worried that I was too big and might get stuck in the tube.  I never worried that someone else might be stuck in the tube and I would crash into them and suffocate.  But now that’s all that’s going through my head as I twist and turn in the darkness.  Plus, I don’t remember the slides being that long.  Why would they invent these?  They’re horrible!  How could I ever enjoy that as a kid?!

Have fun youngsters.  Enjoy it before you get old and become aware of things like cheap labor for building water parks and how much teenage lifeguards get paid.