At the risk of appearing to be very insensitive, last week was an excellent time to visit Six Flags. There was some pretty bad publicity the week earlier so all the park staff were on their best behavior. In addition, no one else thought it was a good idea to head to a theme park where dying was apparently an option.

So the father figure took it upon himself to plan a family adventure day. Most likely due to the fact that the day in question was both X-Man and my birthday. And we were in California for his cousin’s wedding the next day. So he unilaterally decided to take the family to a Six Flags park. It goes without saying that the father figure is not the consumer of news in our family. And as it was to celebrate my birthday, he spent three hours hunting down various discount codes before purchasing tickets.

So there we were, in an empty theme park, I kid you not, as rides came to an end the attendants would ask “wanna go again?” So a good day was had by all. Although it was not without drama.

X-Man was unimpressed with the whole getting off the rides thing. After his first kiddie ride, I found myself requesting a crowbar with which to pry his chubby little two year old fingers off of the ride bar. He responded by trying to bite me and shrieking “No mama no nice!” Our first attempted solution was to try to rush him as quickly as possible to the next ride, where there was little to no line. However it only caused the hysteria to momentarily subside. For a few moments, I thought that X-Man and I should engage in quality mother/son birthday bonding time by enjoying low key baby rides. But seeing as I get enough toddler wrestling time on a daily basis, the father figure stepped in and I went off with Mac. By the time we were reunited, X-Man had the drill down and was no longer creating international incidents when the time to debark rides came.

Mac had an enjoyable time. I had to force him to ride a big roller coaster, because that’s what good moms do. He complained “I don’t want to do this, I don’t want to this….aaaaahhhhh……can we go again?” Of course, the downside to this was that most of the larger rides required an adult to ride along with Mac. The father figure was feeling very magnanimous and insisted I enjoy the experience, each and every time.  Baba was similar. She wanted to try many of the rides, but she certainly had her limits and she wasn’t flexible with them.

Baby, on the other hand, was a roller coaster fiend. She took personal offence to the height requirements which kept her off a grand total of two coasters.  She consoled herself by multiple rides on each of the major coasters that she could ride. And only in the front. She too found herself in need of an adult riding with her. While Baba was tall enough to be the adult, Baba was uninterested in the coasters that called Baby’s name. Which is how I found myself getting off the front seat of a ride listening to Baba say “can we go again? This time I’ll keep my eyes open!”

So for my birthday, I was spun, flipped, and flung for the amusement of my children. I found myself wishing for lines so I could catch my breath. Or talk my kids down to more reasonable experiences. But no such luck, rather I found myself having to explain why we couldn’t come back the following day.