Outta My Way!

A few weekends ago, during one of those interminably hot summer days, T. invited me and some of her friends to go to Six Flags. Usually, I'm a sucker for the rollercoasters, but this time we had a more important destination: the water park.

The water park at this Six Flags isn't anything too terribly exciting: There's a wave pool and maybe 5 or 6 flume rides, many of which require rafts/inner tubes to ride through. And where inner tubes are require for riding... inner tubes then come in high demand.

Unfortunately, for a place that has as its primary goal making people happy, some people view their happiness as more important than others'.

It started relatively early in the day, when T., her husband, their friend Sarah, and I were in line to ride one of the flume rides, inner tubes in hand. As we waiting patiently on the steps for incremental advancement toward the top of the slide, no less than four rugrats -- one at a time -- started pushing their way past us and everyone else in line.

"Scuse me!" they'd call out, pushing on past and up the stairs. "Scuse me!"

"Where do you think you're going?" I eventually asked one of them, in as polite a way as I could muster.

"My cousins up there," my victim responded. [I'm leaving the apostrophe out of that word because, as far as I can tell, he meant the plural "cousins" -- he appeared to join about four kids in front of us -- though he most definitely left out the verb "are."]

Not wanting to bother to argue with him, I let out a huff and he proceeded along his way. Don't these people understand lines?

Later in the day -- after an unfortunate incident wherein the entire park, including the water park, lost power, thus rendering everything of any entertainment value whatsoever useless for a time -- we found ourselves again in a line, inner tubes in hand, snaking up a flight of stairs. T. was in the lead when eventually, we came to a point about midway up the stairs where we encountered a posse of children -- unencumbered by inner tubes, no less -- who, apparently, would not let us pass.

"You guys moving?" T. asked, even though she was definitely puzzled, because you couldn't get on this ride without an inflatable device to sit in.

"I'm waitin' on my cousins," the girl responded. As if on cue, from behind us, some girl started in with "Scuse me! Scuse me!" while trying to push her way through. She came bearing a multi-person inner tube.

Before the "cousin" made it to us, though, T. decided she had had enough. "Well, if you don't have an inner tube, you can't just stand there," she said, and proceeded to move on up the stairs herself.

This was when Big Mama made her appearance.

"What is going on here?" she bellowed from still further back in line. This was not going to be pleasant.

"I'm just saying, if you don't already have your tube with you, you can't just stand here and block everyone else's way," T. said.

"What's the problem?" Big Mama responded. "She's waitin' on us, and we got the tube right here!"

T. held her ground: "Well the rest of us, the ones who know how to stand in line, waited and got our tubes down there like normal people would do. It's not my fault you guys sent her to stand here and block everyone's way."

Big Mama was soooo not pleased. For a second I thought someone -- I'm not sure who -- was going to go flying over the railing.

This argument continued for what felt like minutes. Big Mama held fast to her position that it was perfectly all right to send people to "hold the line" while others retrieved inner tubes; T. (eventually joined by others of our friends) insisted that you get your tubes before standing in line, and if you don't, we can come right on past you.

Eventually, everyone held their place in line: the offending girls kept their position and were given an appropriate inner tube; we were right behind them; and Big Mama and whoever else was in their party were still a bit behind us. T., without admitting that her position was unjustified (because it wasn't), apologized on the stairs to both us (her friends) and the little girl (but most certainly not Big Mama) for potentially ruining a fun ride or a fun day.

On the way out from the ride, T. and Big Mama passed each other. They glared each other down. I again braced myself for a fight, but this did not happen. Whew.

Oh, and the ride? I think it was called the Tornado, and it was freakin' awesome.