September 15th, 2007 by Jemaleddin Cole

We had a pretty good day at Six Flags Amer­ica today (sorry, no pic­tures), but I did some­thing really stupid. We got off the Roar coaster and wan­dered over to one of those swing­ing pirate ship rides that Jared loves. The ride was run­ning, but empty of people, and there were a couple atten­dants sit­ting at the entrance. There was no sign or chain across the entrance, which was cus­tom­ary for the closed rides we had seen, so we wan­dered through the line, only to be told that the ride was closed.

I fig­ured that if there were atten­dants on duty and the ride was run­ning, they were prob­a­bly just late in get­ting it set up, and it would be open later in the day.

So with no actual knowl­edge of whether or not the ride would run, I told Jared that it would be run­ning later.

Or from Jared’s per­spec­tive: I promised Jared that this ride was going to be run­ning later and that I would take him on it, and that if we didn’t go on it, it would ruin the day, so this was the most impor­tant ride in the park.

Really.

So when we strolled by at 2:30 and they were closed, Jared erupted. He had been beg­ging to go back to the Roar for the last half hour, so I thought that was the ride he wanted to go on, but I real­ize now that he didn’t know the ride of the pirate ship (nei­ther do I, obvi­ously), so he wanted to go to the roar so that he could get on the ship.

The rest of the day was down­hill from there. We went on the Roar, had some Ben & Jerry’s, and left for the day, but not with­out buck­ets of tears and howls of pain.

But like I said, a pretty good day.

3 Responses to “Rookie Mistake”

1. Dude that sucks. We had some­thing sim­i­lar happen to us today. It wasn’t 6 flags but today, on our anniver­sary (can you believe 13 years?!?!) we decided to go to Brus­sels for the day. So we hop on the train and head up there and for the first two hours every­thing is great…and then the crying starts. and it doesn’t stop.

   — Sara September 16th, 2007 at 12:37 pm #

2. You’re such an awe­some dad.

   — CanadiensFan September 16th, 2007 at 7:30 pm #

3. @Sara: The real prob­lem when Jared cries is that he doesn’t get all weepy and slow and weak: he gets an imme­di­ate adrenal response that makes that 7-year-old boy into a pow­er­house! He goes from a chubby little kid to a raging mon­ster in about 2 sec­onds, and all you can do is ride it out until he calms down enough to talk him through it.

   @Cana­di­ens­Fan: I want to be a per­fect dad - the guy who wouldn’t make mis­takes like that! (But thanks, buddy!)

   — Jemaleddin September 16th, 2007 at 9:09 pm #