I have found that one of the greatest joys of being a dad is being able to show my kids a good time. A couple weeks ago I took a Friday off work so I could take Olivia to Worlds of Fun.
I was really looking forward to this date because I rarely have the opportunity to spend the the whole day with either Olivia or Hailey one on one. I have very fond memories of day-long outings with my own dad and was excited about the chance to help Olivia develop similar memories. Not only that, but coaster parks have been one of my favorite past times ever since I was a little kid.
For this trip, I fully expected that Olivia would see the train traveling through the park and continually, but with increasing enthusiasm ask me the typical barrage of questions: “Can we ride the train?” And then can we ride the train again?” “Can we ride the train ten times?” When are we going to ride the train?” I figured that the combination of her uniquely high propensity for caution and affinity for trains could lead to a record for most train rides in one day. I couldn’t wait to take her.
I tried to explain to Olivia where we were going about ten minutes before we left the house. She had a vague understanding of what a roller coaster and ferris wheel were thanks to one of her nighttime stories so she was starting to develop some mental images. We were both pretty geeked by the time we made it to the park.
Despite my expectations about her self-imposed limitations, Olivia turned out to be quite the dare devil. We started off slowly at the carrousel (a big hit), but she was open to riding just about everything. At one point I took her on the Sea Dragon, one of my personal favorites. I started in the middle which is the tamest section of the craft, but we continued to ride it throughout the day and moved farther and farther from the center. While riding I even convinced her to throw her arms up. She turned to me giggling and said “It tickles daddy.”
There were a few times while standing in various lines that the train passed by and she shouted “THERE’S THE TRAIN!!!” to alert me and everyone else within fifty feet of the train’s location. We eventually made our way to the train as well.
After a while, we ran into a good friend of mine from work who was with his daughter and one of her friends. Olivia has a serious fondness for older children and made new friends quickly.
We had a special allergen-friendly picnic in the rear of our van and then hit the park for a few more rides before we had to get home.
For our last ride, I took her on the Finnish Fling. Though I’m not generally a fan of spinning rides, I really wanted to let her experience as much as possible. This "ride" is a large cylinder about 10 feet across. Riders stand on the outside of the cylinder with their backs on the wall and it spins increasingly faster. The speed reaches a point that centrifugal force causes riders to cling to the wall and the floor drops out from under their feet. About half way through the ride I decided taking Olivia on board was a poor choice as I felt my cheeks stretch back behind my ears. I was relieved when the floor came back and the ride finally slowed down. After it stopped she looked up at me and said "Can we do that AGAIN?"
So we did.
No comments:
Post a Comment