We're ten hours from the fucking fun park and you want to bail out?

A Random Selection of Things I Remember About Going to Six Flags Over Texas as a Yute

--It would be hot as fuck, no matter what -- you were going to sweat, and you'd try to get cooled off by going in that creepy Spelunker's Cave thing or the Log Flume ride; the former would work for ten minutes, but then by contrast from the air-conditioned dark (with elves) you'd be extra super hot when you got back out into the blasting furnace of the Texass summer, while the latter only netted you a wet T-shirt & shorts and a smell of green water swamp-ass funk for the rest of the day.

--Once I went with CN's family, and they totally did it wrong; instead of the kids running off and meeting back up at regular intervals, we all had to stick together the whole day. Instead of paying too much for lunch at, say, the "Mexico" area, we had to go out to BFE* to some shadeless miserable picnic table off the grounds and eat lousy French's-mustard bologna sandwiches and stuff they brought in a cooler. And we did not get to stay till the place closed. LAAAME.

--From the ages of about eleven to ... probably fifteen, one of my primary must-do's on the list was to get my picture taken in the Olde Tymie Photoe Boothe thing, where you'd pull on a Southern Belle costume that tied in the back and get yer pitcher took, done up all olde-tymie. I had this thing about Gone With the Wind, remember -- yet another of my regrettable obsessions. Oi. And it cost like fifteen dollars, which is a lot of babysitting time, Internets.

--I spent at least one trip fully locked into Fake British Accent mode. I think I was fourteen. It was the only way I could talk to cute boys, and cute must = stupid, because I am pretty sure they bought it.

--I went there on a double date once, with SR and his friend and one of my friends I can't remember who it was. It was fun, but the main thing I remember was that "Should I Stay or Should I Go" (I want to say Big Audio Dynamite?) was apparently on endless repeat on the park sound system.

--When we were about twelve, my friend CD's dad took several of us on Kroger Nite, when the company had rented out the whole damn park, which meant there were like 200 people in the place total, so we packed so many rides into three hours that it felt like we were there for days, we OWNED the place, it was AWESOME.

--The Shockwave was the biggest, baddest ride on the lot. A double-loop roller coaster, blue-painted metal rising up beside the highway, the better to entice young Gleemonex anytime we went anywhere near Arlington. It took me years to work up the courage (and the height), but once I did, there might just as well have been no other structure in the joint. Just thinking about it gives me goosebumps -- I want to go to there. Now.

--Probably the most epic trip was when my mom took a gaggle of us (me & CD, my bro and like four of his giant gangly teenage friends) one explosively hot Labor Day weekend (theme: How Many Overheated Un-Sunscreened Human Bodies Can This Park Theoretically Hold? Let Us Find Out!), and despite the fact that we got there when the place opened, the lines were so long we had only actually ridden like three rides by 2:00 p.m., at which point the skies bruised up and then dumped Noah's Fictional Ark-style buckets of thunderous lightning-pocked rain for HOURS. Then we were wet and cold and miserable and Mexico ran out of food and most of the rides were closed for inspection/towel-drying and my bro and his friends disappeared to go to the Night Ranger show in the amphitheater (which had been the point of coming on this day & not another one).

--No matter what, a trip to Six Flags was always, always the absolute single-day highlight of the summer.

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*Beyond Fucking Egypt, or, later, Bum-Fuck Egypt. Even churchy kids curse! Sort of!