Avoiding black slide of death

Today, I am catching up on some museum exhibits at the Getty and the Geffen Contemporary that are about to close, so I offer this column which won an award from National Newspaper News Executives in 2003 as Best Humorous Column when it appeared in the Antelope Valley Press. What could be more fitting in this 100 degree weather than going to a water park?

The Black Snake Summit at Six Flags Hurricane Harbor in Valencia,
home of the Twisted Fang slide. www.marriott.com

Just in case you are not convinced that the perfect body is nothing but the fever-dream creation of Conde Nast and Hugh Hefner, spend the afternoon at a water park.

In the nine hours I spent there, out of the thousands of people I saw, there were maybe three perfect bodies, two of them teenagers.

Even some people who look terrific with their clothes on have a few places that are dimpled and jiggly when they are walking around in a swimsuit.

I learned two things from my time spent at Hurricane Harbor — that no matter what size you are, there are plenty of people fatter than you, and some of them will be wearing bikinis.

I have battled bulges since I was 12, so I know how hard it is to lose weight, and I don't think that carrying extra pounds makes you less of a woman or less of a person.

But I also don't think it's something to be proud of and lovingly swathe in Spandex.

But that's just me.

It was entertaining, though, lying on a lounge chair by the Forgotten Sea wave pool, watching thousands of people walking around half-dressed.

The wave pool in motion looks like the last half-hour of "Titanic." The machine kicks up two foot waves and the tank is as crowded as a beach in mid-July.

Those revelers who had a few extra dollars after they got held up without a gun at the front gate are on rented rafts.

The rest of the poor suckers, like steerage passengers, are bobbing around trying simultaneously not to drown or get kicked in the head by those in the rafts.

It's interesting how the theme park experience changes with the age of your children. When they are small, we parents are the ones encouraging them to be brave and move beyond their comfort zones.

You hold their chubby little hand while they wade in the kiddie pool or dog-paddle around the shallow end. Then you wake up one day and they are saying, "C'mon Mom, doncha want to go down Venom Drop?"

No, I don't want to go down the Black Slide of Death — the one that sits at a 90-degree angle to the ground.

Now, suddenly, they are the ones dragging me to the top of something called Black Snake Summit - 75 feet in the air - encouraging me to fling my middle-aged body down twisted metal tubes that look like human Habitrails.

I braved most of the rides, although I did have a ugly claustrophobic moment as I looked into the black mouth of the Twisted Fang, an enclosed body slide.

I realized that I would be in a small, pitch-black place for the amount of time it would take for me to fall 500 feet. Thankfully, that took only a few seconds.

But, like Alice, down the rabbit hole I went; my anxiety over how I was going to manage to get off the ride with a modicum of decorum overcoming my abject terror. And then, in a twinkling, it was over.

I think that is why we have teenagers, to push us screaming out of our comfort zones, just when we think we should be sitting around in lounge chairs taking it easy.

Even though they may have taken over our confidence-building and cultural-translation roles, they still need us.

I don't know about anybody else's teens, but mine still haven't managed to figure out how to spend the day in the sun without getting horribly burned.

So they bring us along to do what we have always done — provide cash and nag them to put on their sunscreen.