David Levy - 48 Inches

 

Summertime, 10 years ago was the most memorable summer of my life because of my son, Tyson. It was 2008, and he was eight years old. But it wasn't his age that made that summer so memorable. It was his height. Because just prior to that summer, Tyson finally reached the height of 48 inches, which I can tell some of you recognize as the minimum height necessary to ride most of the adult thrill rides at Kings Island Amusement Park. [audience laughter] 

 

We had been going to the park for two years, but for two years, we were sequestered to the children's side of the park, shooting ghosts in the Scooby Doo haunted mansion and riding rides with words like teacup and caterpillar in their name. [audience laughter] The other side of the park is the ride warriors side. This is the side the commercial's promise is where the awesome is at. We would venture over there from time to time, but the only thing that we could do there was for Tyson to measure himself against the you must be this tall line [audience laughter] and repeatedly come up short. 

 

So, if the summer of 2008 was my most memorable summer, by far the most memorable day was the first day that went to the park that summer, me and my 48-inch-tall son. [audience laughter] As soon as we entered the park, we made an immediate beeline for the closest rides to the entrance that we knew Tyson could now ride. And that's what brought us face to face with the extreme flyer. Now, in case you're not familiar, this ride reminds me of the St. Louis Arch. Up to three riders can ride at once. Each wears a harness, to the back of which is attached a cable. The other end of that cable is attached at the top of the arch, 150ft in the air, 17 stories. 

 

The riders are then bound together, and then a crane drags them backward and up into the air until they are even with the top of the arch and facing the ground. This is about where we came in that day. We watched as the attendant gave the riders the thumbs up. This was their cue to pull the ripcord, releasing them from the crane, causing them to free fall, until the cables to their harnesses went taut and they began to swing like a pendulum down through the arch out over our heads and into the air like they were flying. This is the first ride we see when we get to the park that day. [audience laughter] When Tyson sees it, he says, “I want to ride that one.” 

 

So, full confession. I'm not a big fan of thrill rides. [audience laughter] In fact, I'm utterly terrified of them. Whenever I've gone to an amusement park with friends, they would have to goad me all day long to ride even one. And if I did, it was only with knuckles white from clutching whatever safety device I had at my disposal, and then to keep myself calm, chanting my favorite mantra over and over in my head, competent engineers designed this ride. Competent engineers designed this ride. [audience laughter] And if that didn't work, this ride has been operated thousands of times safely before now, over and over until the ride was over and I could begin to put the unpleasantness behind me. This was my history with thrill rides. 

 

So, he's pulling on my arm, saying, “Let's go. Let’s go.” But I'm paralyzed in place, and I'm wondering how it is possible that I could know that this moment has been coming for two years and yet I'm still entirely unprepared for it. And so, I swear it was just a stall when I said, “I don't know, Tyson. That ride looks kind of scary to me.” But then, God bless him, just because daddy said so, he agreed. He looked at the ride and I heard him say, “Yeah, that does look kind of scary.” His shoulders dropped and his eyebrows wrinkled. 

 

I don't know exactly how to describe what two years of enthusiasm and anticipation that's about to bust out of an eight-year-old boy's body looks like, but whatever that is, it had been there a minute ago and now it was gone and that was because of me. I know that fear is not a genetically inherited trait, but I just witnessed how it could be handed from one generation to the next. But in that moment, and I knew I only had a moment, the only thing I could think to do to prevent from handing my fears off to him was to swallow them myself. So, I took a deep breath and I said, “Yeah, that ride does look kind of scary, but it looks like a fun kind of scary. [audience laughter] Let's do it.” 

 

So, the thing about this ride-- Most of the rides in the park have a harness that holds you in. This ride is the harness. And as the attendant was attaching the cable to the back of mine, I looked at the top of the arch where the other end was attached and I remember thinking, that's a lot of cable for something to go wrong with. [audience laughter] So, I start looking around for a clipboard with a piece of paper on it, the kind of thing you might see in a public bathroom, just some sign that somebody's been around recently to inspect this thing. [audience laughter] No clipboard. 

 

And then, the scissor lift, which is holding up the platform that I didn't even realize we were standing on, begins to lower. And now, we're attached to the arch, so we're not lowering with it. And pretty soon, we're on our tiptoes, and then the platform goes lower still. And we fall forward so that we're hanging horizontally by these cables. This was unexpected, so Tyson laughs and I scream, because that's what I do. [audience laughter] 

 

And then, the attendant binds our legs together, and he comes around in front, and he takes our inside arms, my right, Tyson's left, and he wraps them around each other at the elbow, and he says, “Whatever you do during the entire ride, do not unhook your arms.” So, I'm starting to sweat. I grab my wrist, because I am not letting go of Tyson's arm and I hear Tyson yell, “Yeah.” To some question I hadn't heard asked. And the next thing I know, we're being dragged backward and up into the air by the crane. So, I close my eyes for a moment, but then I'm like, “No, you know what? Live or die, I am only riding this ride once.” [audience laughter] 

 

So, my eyes are open when I get to the top. I'm inspecting the ground for any sign of an imprint in the shape of a body. [audience laughter] And I hear, “Hey.” It's the attendant. And I'm like, “What do you want?” He's giving me the thumbs up. So, I look at Tyson to see if he's ready. And who am I kidding? He's been ready for two years. So, it's up to me. I pull the ripcord. I forget that the ride starts with us free falling, so I'm thinking, we're dead. [audience laughter] And then, it occurs to me that my mantra, that this ride has been operated thousands of times safely before now, has a serious flaw in it, because of course, things work until they break, that's what braking is. [audience laughter] So, I am at the peak of terror when our cables go taut and we drop into that swing, speeding downward. If you believe Wikipedia, hitting 67 miles an hour and coming within six feet of the ground as we pass through the arch and flow fly. 

 

Tyson's screaming with excitement, and I'm screaming with terror and I'll admit, maybe a little bit of excitement. And then, we swing back and forth again, but not quite as high and back and forth again and still not quite as high, and I'm finding myself a little disappointment that we're not getting the lift that we did on that first swing. So, when the ride is over and Tyson yells, “That was awesome,” I'm like, “That was awesome.” I mean, I'm shaking all over, but that was awesome. [audience laughter] And then, he points at the next ride, Drop zone. [audience laughter] Only the tallest ride in the park. So, we ride that and then the Italian Job, which almost gives me whiplash, and then Top Gun, which has us swinging around, narrowly avoiding trees. 

 

And after each ride, Tyson's like, “Awesome, awesome, awesome.” I'm having a good time, but I don't know how much more of this I can take. [audience laughter] My mantras are becoming useless to me, becoming desensitized to them. So, thank God, it's 10 o' clock at night. There's only time for one more ride before the park closes and we're getting into the front seat of the vortex. You know it. [audience laughter] It's a roller coaster. I inspected it before we got in. It occurred to me that for all of the swinging and the dropping and the flailing about that I've had to endure this day, I had yet to be on a ride that would turn us upside down. The vortex would do that to us six times. 

 

So, I'm in pre-panic mode when the ride begins. And then, all of a sudden, boom, explosion. The nightly fireworks they set up [audience laughter] to signal the closing of the park go off, and they're happening right in the sky in front of us. So, as we're climbing that first ascent, going way above the tree line at a moment at a time when I really should have been in full panic mode, instead we're gawking at the fireworks, so that I barely recognize when we crest the top of the hill. It's not until we're plummeting down that first drop, which is going to take us into the first two loop de loops, that it occurs to me, “Oh, my God, my wallet. My keys. Tyson, could I save all three?” [audience laughter] 

 

But those competent engineers in their physics have made sure we're sitting snugly in our seats, so that the only thing there is to think about when we're upside down for that very first time, is how those fireworks, which a moment ago had been firing from the ground up, now it looked like they were firing from the sky down. And that was pretty incredible. There were two loops in a row, so we got to look at that twice. And the rest of the ride was just a blur of screaming and laughter until it came to that short stop that roller coasters do, but then the fireworks finale played out right in front of us. It was glorious. 

 

So, when we got off the ride, and Tyson inevitably yelled what I knew he would yell, what he had yelled after every ride we'd ridden that day, for the first time that day, I was absolutely certain that he was correct, “That was awesome.”