Feeling 10 Again

I'm not much of an amusement park person anymore.

I get incredibly dizzy when I go on rides and feel very sick afterwards.

In fact, I can get sick to my stomach just watching the rides,

so when we went to the Santa Cruz Boardwalk a week ago

I did not even think twice about not buying a ride pass for myself.

Sistah and I watched the girls ride and talked about all the times Mom had taken us to amusement parks when we were children. We wondered how many times we actually went to each amusement park because in our memories we always went to amusement parks all the time. As we watched the girls laugh and shout on the rides we knew we were creating memories for them. We hoped that when they are grown they will think they always went to amusement parks too.

When Sistah and I saw the Tilt-a-Whirl we laughed and both said that it had always been one of our favorite rides with Mom. Suddenly Sistah decided that despite my nausea issues we should use a few tickets to ride the Tilt-a-whirl together in memory of Mom. I instantly agreed.
We felt a bit awkward standing in line because we were surrounded by children but none of them were ours. The girls were off waiting for a different ride. When our turn finally came to get on we ran onto the ride feeling like 10 year olds. Saddly the last car was snatched up by a real 10 year old who wanted to ride all by himself. Where is the fun in that? The ride hardly spins with one person in it. But I guess he was too young to know that secret yet, so we reluctantly went back to the front of the line and pouted. Sistah complained like a 10 year old the whole time we waited.

When the ride finally finished we anxiously waited for the children to leave so the attendant would let us in. One child stopped at the top of the stairs to look at the ride next to us. I had to keep Sistah back so that she would not run in and physically remove the child from the ride. Finally after an eternity of about five seconds the child moved and the gate was opened.

We ran to one of the cars.
It was all ours!

We took a picture to commemorate the day.

You can see how excited we were.

We had been at the beach all day

and so you can also see that we were a bit crisp.

The next few minutes were pure joy.

We leaned hard to make the car spin and reel.

I laughed so hard I thought I might actually throw up

or wet my pants.

Thankfully neither happened.

With each spin around

I could see the people in line and around the ride.

They were watching us.

Each grown up had a big smile on their face.

I knew they were jealous of the

"two old ladies on the Tilt-a-Whirl" (as sistah dubbed us).

We had let our inner child loose and boy did she have a blast.