A Day In The Park

It's been, all in all, a pretty damned fine day in the park.

The weather's been all over the place: partly sunny, partly cloudy, a passing shower here and there, a couple of which were heavy enough to temporarily shut down all the rides and send guests scurrying for cover. And the lines for the rides were occasionally a little much to take: nobody likes standing still for any length of time, least of all you.

You've been everywhere in the park, it seemed. Know half the guests by name, and more than a few of the employees; hell, back in the mid-afternoon you ran the place yourself for a while, just to see how it was, and it was...pretty damned fine. Between ten and noon you built a couple of shops, a ride or two, and created a marquee eatery that looks as if it'll be satisfying guests for a century or longer. You'd spent a goodly part of the day behind the scenes, sometimes tending the gardens that you'd also created to beautify the park, sometimes out in the fishpond off in the woods behind the back lot, alone with the fish and your thoughts. You raised your family to embody many of the same qualities you have yourself: your son is tinkering around the park even now, making sure everything's running as it should be--oh, there he is with his daughter, your lovely grand-daughter,  stepping on one of the kiddie rides, holding her safe and revelling in her angelic grin, so like his own...Your daughter is a fixer, too: she can look at the entire park at a glance and tell you where the loose bolts are, how much food the concessions are going through, and even what tomorrow's attendance is likely to be.

Behind every great man is a woman rolling her eyes, and the wife of your life rolls hers with regularity at the antics you get up to, but you're not fooled. You're blessed with prodigious strength, of course...but even more comes from the love of a strong woman who has filled the day with laughter and affection...it's been a pretty damned fine day. Still plenty of time left before closing: the sun is a red ball sinking towards the horizon and the park doesn't close until midnight. But...what's that over there?

Who built that roller coaster without telling you about it? Why couldn't you see it before now? It's huge, gigantic, a monstrosity that towers over your family park. Even stranger, not many of the guests seem not to notice it at all. You can see the turnstiles of the lineup, and they're virtually empty. The few people in line are moving as if drugged, with vaguely frightened looks on their faces.

You go over to investigate this intrusion on your park and find yourself in line to ride it. That wasn't your intention, of course, and you grasp right off that nobody actually wants to ride this thing...and yet here you are in line, and if you turn around and try to duck out of it, you find a transparent wall slowly gliding along behind you, preventing you from taking so much as one step backwards. That's frightening...nowhere else today have you had the sensation of being pushed along a certain course. You've been setting your own course. But here you are in the dusk of the day being guided towards something unknown, something that, truth be told, you'd rather not know. There's a sign that says SINGLE RIDERS ONLY, and that's scary, too. But you've got courage, a day in the park has granted you a seemingly limitless reserve of it, and so you steel yourself and walk forward. Your back hurts...your whole body hurts. It's been a long day. But you walk forward and soon enough you're in the queuing area, ready to board the train. It's painted black--dark black, as if there could be such a thing--and you can see that this is a coaster you ride laying down.
The wall behind you gives one last jolt and tumbles you into the train. There is pain, and a real sense of humiliation--who built this why didn't I see it why can't I get off of it--that hurts worse. And then the train starts to move.

It says SINGLE RIDERS ONLY, and you're definitely alone in this train...or are you? If you look to your right, you can see your wife, grimly holding your hand; if you look to the left, you son and daughter are right there with you, along with their families, and there's a whole host of friends in your peripheral vision. You're not alone. Not even close. Your dogs are even in this with you, lending what love they can.

The lift chain grabs your train and begins to pull it up a long, long hill. You're torn. On the one hand, you never wanted to be on this thing in the first place and you wish it would just hurry up and be over. On the other hand, what goes up must come down and any hill this high must be followed by one hell of a drop.

You can see the whole park from up here. The rides and shops you built, standing proudly in the setting sun. The little lake--a fish just jumped there, see that? Your gardens are soaking up the last of the sun's rays. If you look closely--you can do that, somehow, even this high up--you can see that all's well down there. It should be. That's how you made it.

And then the crest of the hill: a voice intones 'KEEP YOUR ARMS AND LEGS INSIDE THE TRAIN AT ALL TIMES', which is a laugh, you can't move even though you'd like to;  the train seems to pause on the edge of eternity before it begins to plummet towards the ground. Some people scream along about now. You're not one of them. Oh, that's not to say this is fun, exactly, but later on when you get off this thing, you might be able to appreciate it a little better. You close your eyes.

An unknown time later, the train approaches the station where you boarded. To the left, where you got on, you can see your family and friends--not in line, just milling around. There's tears and laughter and lots of talk about your day in the park and how wonderful it's been to share it with you. And then you look to the right....and there's a whole new park out there, so much bigger...and there are people here, too, people you know, people you love, and they're beckoning to you, telling you to come on, there's so much more to see and do, and you find you can, you can get up and walk...or float, or fly, or whatever you choose to do. With one last look back at the family and friends who have shared your day, you understand that when they choose to, they'll hop on the dilly of a coaster you just rode, and get off and join you. And you step out into a whole new world.