Moment of Clarity

This past Sunday night I had a clear moment of clarity in my life. Oprah would probably call it an "A-ha" moment.

You see last night, Sunday, was my oldest son's 10th birthday. Being my only child to have a winter birthday, we normally go somewhere for his parties. There is nothing worse than a houseful of young boys, and it being to cold outside to tell them to go outside and play.

So this year we took four of his closest friend to a local hotel that has a big water park inside of it. All the boys behaved, and had a great time burning off their winter energy. I, on the other hand was dreading squeezing into my five year old bathing suit, in my overweight body and winter pasty white skin. Lets face it, I am always pasty white, but it tends to look worse in the winter, under florescent lights.

When I was a child growing up, my family always went camping for a full week in the summer at Jellystone Park in Warrens Wisconsin. It was always the highlight of the summer. We went with my cousins and friends of the family. We normally totaled about five families. Back in the day, when the campground was MUCH smaller than it is now, the big attraction was the water slide. It only opened a few time during the day. And for something like $5.00 you could go down the water slide as many times as you could in half an hour. Trust me, when you are 10 years old, you can run up the stairs alot faster so you can go down the slide at least 20 times. The picture above is the actual water slide at the campground.

So having Matt's party at a water park, I was excited to go down a few water slides. I hadn't been to a water park for about 5 years, the last trip being Hurricane Harbor in Dallas. Well finding a tube was next to impossible at this park, so I decided to go down the one slide that you don't need a tube to go down. I calmly walked to the top of all the stairs with the other little kids running past me as fast as they could. Waited in line for my turn, asking the kids if this was a fun slide or not. They all told me it sped up about half way through the ride. I told them that if they hear screaming through the top of the tube, not to laugh at me. When it was my turn, I took a deep breath and shot my self down the tube as fast as I could.

Throughout this 20 second ride I came to four different conclusions.

#1 I am way to claustrophobic to do small tube rides.

#2 They are making water slides much faster nowadays.

#3 I feel the fatter you are, the faster you must go.

#4 I am way to old to do water slides any more.

When I got to the bottom of the ride, Jeff and Timmy were waiting for me to see how it went. I actually made Jeff put his hand on my chest to feel how fast my heart was racing. My hands didn't stop shaking for at least half an hour. It was a real adrenalin rush, but it was also the only water slide I did the entire time I was there. I figure I did one to prove that I can still have fun, but once was enough.

Today I am headed off to a snow tubing place to join up with my daughter and her friends. Hopefully I will fair better in a snow tube than I did with a water tube. Only in Minnesota can you do two different tubings in two days. I'll let you guys know how it goes, wish me luck.