Thursday, April 14, 2011

scary stuff, eh kids?

I used to love being a teenager. I had an absolute blast, which is why I love watching my own boys going through the teen years. I don't remember my parents being anywhere near as sarcastic with me as I am with my kids, but I must have made them shake their heads many many times.

one of the things I remember most fondly are the youth retreats I went on. mostly because it was a time to be in a hotel or on a gym floor with a ton of kids close to my age but also, if I am being remotely honest, because some of those kids were boy types.

*smile*

on one such occasion, I was at a brand new howard johnson near niagara falls. I don't remember if it was at a mall or what, but there was also a thing called nightmares there. yep, I could pay money to have the crap scared out of me and would only be rescued if I screamed the word nightmares loudly enough (and the people working the funhouse could be bothered to come get me).

I was with jen and heather and trisha in this stupid maze of blackness and turns when trisha first started freaking out. apparently someone had touched her bum ... not just once ... and the last time it happened, in the pitch black, she spit out her retainer. so she was half laughing, half crying, holding my hand and telling me this when the tiny white christmas lights on the ceiling went out. not cool.
I remember all of us trying to stay as a group, clumped, as it were, like we were stuck together with crazy glue. the people running the place were trying very hard to wrench us apart, but if you know girls at all you have to know that was so not going to happen.

the next thing we knew, we found ourselves in a tiny closet, walls surrounding us, with apparently no way out but the itsy bitsiest opening to heather's left. there was no way my imagination was going to let me try and crawl through that! I could just see myself getting completely wedged in and spontaneously peeing against my will out of sheer terror.
yes, I realize that this whole thing sounds stupid and not scary in the least but that is not the point.
it never is.

so ... I screamed nightmares, while laughing hysterically, until some guy came and gruffly pulled me out of the puny closet. now that I think about it, it was easy for him to do. huh. I was sure there was no way out.
I ended up on a bench outside the funhouse waiting for the rest of the group to emerge. it wasn't so bad, really.
I remember there being a pretty cute boy also waiting for his friends on the same bench and we ended up long distance dating for a while.

as it turns out, the small opening was more than a foot wide and was actually quite expandable if you pushed hard enough, and was a mere four feet from the exit of the funhouse as a whole.
as you ran out of the exit wedge, someone came at you with a bladeless chainsaw, took your picture as you looked like you were going to puke and that was the end of your $12 of incredible fun.

yah ... good times.

1 comment:

mridul said...

nightmares took me to a different realm.....it was indeed scary..but fun as well....