They're all totally stoned, I think.... I hear my 6 year old daughter talking like a baby and naming everything....everything is her 'baby doll'... everything inanimate is...well, animate... "I love you widdew Reeses peanut buttew tup; I am dunna teep you fowevah". The eldest is happily cackling, after a quick swing from the pendulum and I am no longer holding the title of 'worst mother ever' for not buying him that $60 lego set on the way out after spending 1k on this trip... now, NOW, now he is happily calling everyone "booger" and "butt" and talking about underwear. The "baby" who is oddly larger than the rest is screaming that he doesn't want to go home and that we should go to "the park" instead. I inhale deeply and pray that I don't turn around and choke him. And 3, 2, 1... he is out. The screaming banshee who has not slept in 48 hours is out.... omg. The giggling, screaming, punching two hour fight to get him to go to bed, that battle I did not win followed by whining and threatening and shit talk from this 4-year-old punk JUST ended.... just now.
I will try to recall this place... this experience... this hell. I need to take it in baby steps and explain what I can recall rather than trying to go in order... it's all a stew of sludge and saliva, and slushy-french-fried backwash...I'm reading self-help pamphlets and swaying back and forth in my fetal position in the passenger seat, so I need to go slow.
1.) Everyone is fucking pregnant. Why on earth are you here? Why do this again? Don't you see the hell you must endure for every child you pop out? Why are you subjecting your fetus to this heat? This hell?
Oh, and every one judges. Everyone stares at you while your kid is on the floor taking his clothes off and screaming like he is being tortured, blood-curdling screams (because you wouldn't spend $9 on a blue icee in a commemorative glass that holds less than 8 ozs of frozen sugar water). Well, not another one, that is... and you choose to ignore him and happily eat your fries (the only thing served besides sugar water and fried chicken) and everyone fucking judges you and acts as though they could handle it better. I Homer-Simpson choked him at the last stop, I bribed him with legos and candy at the stop before that, we had a mature "talk" the time before that. So, now I ignore. And then thankfully one nice parent- person comes up and says knowingly "the third?" I half nod in emotionally jaundiced, bright-eyed wonderment like she can read my fucking thoughts... And she says "they're such assholes, aren't they?" #therapy.
2.) Everyone is fucking fat. And that's because all they serve is french fries... "apple fries" is my favorite lie. It's still fries: fried, and fatty... and when you watch other consumers, it adds 12 pounds to the voyeurs. It's a viscous cycle of consume, commiserate and self-loathe. There were no "fit" people in Legoland. So, I "fit" right in. There's no pretty there. Even the bugs were trained not to bite the patrons, but insist on swarming and threatening that if their employer wasn't directly connected to Disney, they'd CUT YOU, just the same.. I found the one "salad" they served... Even that Styrofoam shit was deep fried. The gummy "peas and carrots" held more nutritional value. I ate those, too. And more gluten and oil (and wine..) than one person should consume in a week. FYI- They only serve wine near the water park, because it is by far the most frustrating and even Bob the Builder or whatever satanic fuck made this place couldn't deny adults booze at this stage in their demon-park.
3.) The rides: Mothers waiting in the heat while dads go on crazy rides. We wait in the sun for hours while they see the movies and air-conditioned preludes to the 12 second thrill. Someone has to watch the stroller. Someone ought to stay with the petrified child who opts out of every and any opportunity for fun. :waves hand: That was me. FML.
4.) No matter how precisely you thought you shaved, you will always be exposing some long random pubic forest that has the precision of a Furn Gully deforestation scene; caught off-handed at large (cess)pools where everyone is half-naked. You get primal and start pulling and picking and grooming, waiting out of the torture of the screams and fighting- so medieval these public parks of play... jousting children, eating ravenously- this food you fought for with your bare hands... and fighting over water and shade like it's the fight for life. And then amid it all.... three, large curly overgrown hairs pointing their way towards your flabby stomach and unshaved nether regions unsheathe and initiate your new Trichotillomania diagnosis.
5.) Oh, yeah...the kids learned how to drive. There is actually a ride that teaches your 6-12 year olds how to drive. Roz was unbelievably excited about "getting her license" and went through the whole tutorial until it came time to drive the little one-seater go-carts and she realized I could not drive for her. She insisted on NOT driving and realized this meant, she wouldn't get her picture on a fake DMV card afterwards to which she responded with screaming. Blood-curdling, painful, violent, stabbing screaming. There's Roz screaming "it's not fair" in the same way Sophie's daughter may have screamed when Soph' chose to save her son, instead, and her daughter...cut to the scene while she was writhing in pain in the gas chambers....THAT kind of scream. I should have just left her. I caved. I got the fucking license. Maybe 'cause I understand how important having a driver's license is for a 6-year-old girl to have or because generally, I like her more than the others. Maybe to shut the screaming off 'cause she does it louder.... I let her sit with the idea that she wouldn't get one...for a while... as we watched the kids driving- to teach a lesson or stop the ringing in my head. Now, the kids all "learning to drive" was by no means a race. It was a little "city" where the kids practiced stopping, turning, waiting.. They all held their little sweaty heads on their hands, looking pissed off, waiting in traffic, waving their hands to speed up their fellow drivers. At that moment, I wished I was stuck in traffic in my little car rather than melting in tiny toon land with a screaming banshee on the floor, threatening to kill herself over a $16 "license" to drive a fake car in a fake town that she didn't even step foot in because her mother can't fit in this TYCO-MF-battery-operated POS.
6.) All little boys play with themselves, constantly. And pick their butts. Thank God, it's not just mine.
7.) This is everyone else's vacation, not yours. And they don't have manners or spacial awareness... and they mask their crassness with big words like "ma'am" and "sir" while gritting under their teeth how much they hate you. These Cheryl, Stephy, Bob-types are only slightly less nauseating than the moms who dress their kids alike in bright yellow tops adorned with "The Jefferson's Family Vacay 2014" with name badges, fully stocked with sunscreen and cameras and everything to make the most 'perfect trip' (these are the Cooper, Spencer, Tyler varieties).
8.) Kids are public bathroom surveyors. They only have to pee when: a) you've been waiting on line for 3 hours and you are finally about to get on the ride, b) when you are late for something, c) when the only available restroom is the smelliest, nastiest, most inconvenient one in town- freshly adorned with C-Diff, and d) after they've been fighting the urge for an hour- after they said they didn't have to- (they did) when you were near one ten minutes ago and now it is almost too late, and if you don't stop what you're doing right now, they will most certainly have an accident and you don't have a change of clothes, so you will HAVE to buy a Legoland t-shirt and shorts at the bargain price of $60 that they will never fit in again after today.
9.) Everyone is Legoland has a lisp. Don't ask me how or why, it's just a fact. Ith weird ath hell.
10.) People tend to barrage you with texts when you're not around and on "vacation". It's always about plans for when you aren't in your current hell and it's always impossible to imagine yourself out of said hell, and one is usually up to their eyebawls in heat and lava, so it's hard to answer back... and when you do, you lose a kid or someone steals your water out of your stroller or you bump into a pregnant woman or an Asian family and its awkward, so stop fucking texting me so much and getting pissed when I don't respond in the middle of LegoFuckingLand, #thankyouverymuch.
11.) Shit always goes horribly wrong when you're gone. Patients who were well, die. And Robin Williams... Robin fucking Williams. I can't... That's all I can say about that.
12.) Remakes of pitch-corrected KIDS-BOP'd teens singing classics... "Wanna Soak up the Sun" "Walking on Sunshine" "Pocket Full of Sunshine" "Surfin' USA" blast on repeat. It's worse than karaoke. It's worse than french-fried farts in a recycled air-conditioned car. It's worse than the chorus of icee-blue mouths chirping how "unfair" life is while you only go on the "shooter ride" one more time after 12 rounds of pretend blasting the people you wish you could at very least hit with a nerf pellet. Who are these "artists"? It's sacrilege.
13.) Incessant picture taking. You go on a ride, you go to the bathroom, or you swim in a pool... someone is there to sell you the picture. The "games" with carnival barkers and one toss is $6 for one stuffed toy they "neeeeeeeeeed" and "loooooooove" and name that you carry all fucking day- named "fluffy" that they "need and adore and will keep forever"- that never makes it out of the car until you get the oil changed three months later and it ends up in a bag of trash you bring into the house and it ends up as a chew toy for the dogs and regurgitated into vomit fluff into your new winter wonderland.
Parents in hats, sun block, glasses, umbrellas... like incognito celebrity cults headed toward a death chamber. Kids so sweaty and tired and sugared up, they have no idea how miserable they are...but as long as they don't catch on how miserable WE are...and as long as you get just one picture that shows you smiling.... you can look back in twenty years and remember the BEST time you had on your first (dis)organized family vacation to a theme park.
In an hour, I will be home, showered, and intoxicated. Cody may vomit. Baz may get thrown out of the car. Roz may get more sleep at this moment than anyone has the whole trip. Please do not contact me until tomorrow.
Thanks,
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