So if your memory is better than mine you may recall that last week here on the Daze I mentioned a recent trip to a splash from the past. In fact, you could call it a “splashback”. (You could, but I wouldn’t dare. That would be dumb.)
I was remembering how the Better Half and Rotten Kids and I used to go on mini-holidays to a waterslide hotel. And then a couple of weeks ago I ended up in Cowtown by my own self for a few days, staying at the very same pool palace, and wondering if those epic slides were still there. And I was wondering something else.
Could I still actually tackle a huge, fast and furious waterslide? Do they even allow baby booming people of a certain age (fossils) onto the waterslides? Do they have an onsite paramedic?
It was uncannily exactly like my foggy memory remembered it. In fact my head swirled and I was dizzy with the sheer force of the happy remembrance. Or maybe it was the chlorine. There’s a lot of chlorine in large indoor water facility.
I was thrilled that some things are still how you hope they will be. And then I wasn’t so thrilled on account of at weak moments like this I know myself well enough to know that I’m about to do something stupid.
Normally I would head for the hot tub and stay there soaking up the soothing scalding swirls until just before losing consciousness. And then it would be time to stagger out of the hot tub like a drunken prune and find the nearest two hour nap.
But they loomed. The waterslides. They beckoned. Right there in front of me. They practically taunted me. “C’mon baby boomer fossil,” their rushing waters seemed to echo in the din. “I double dog dare you!” they said, and everybody knows you can’t ignore a double dog dare.
So I trudged up, up, up the slippery stairs against my better judgement, but as I stood at the scary gate thingy I figured the Rotten Kids would never forgive me if I didn’t give it a go for old time’s sake. So I closed my eyes, held my breath and took a mighty jump headlong into the breach. Well, a mighty flop, really.
I had said to myself, just before flopping: “Self, don’t lie down. Lying down goes too fast. Sit up. Make sure you sit up and go slow!” So, of course, I flopped right on my back like an Olympic luge maniac. And now it’s too late. I couldn’t sit up if I tried (which I did.) (Desperately.) The massive G forces of my supersonic sliding were just too intense. 100 gallons (240 liters) of chlorine infested water shooting directly up my nose.
I careened frantically down and around that slide like a giant sea slug having a seizure at Mach One, yelling and screaming with somebody else’s weird voice until just as I was about to pass out, I shot out of the end of that tube like the proverbial bat out of the proverbial hades. Right onto the bottom of a very deep pool. Upside down. And backwards. And I hadn’t taken an actual breath (of air) for a very long time.
Later that day in the ambulance… just kidding - I somehow managed to rescue myself and carry proudly forth knowing I was still capable of being stupid. But, hey - with a half dozen or so physiotherapy appointments my wrenched back, tweaked sciatica, sore hips and possibly dislocated shoulder should eventually be back to very nearly normal. For a baby boomer fossil.
Harley Hay is a Red Deer writer and filmmaker.