Like a general. That’s how you launch an attack on a theme park, especially if it’s the middle of July. A Florida July.
Have you had that kind of an experience? Sweat pouring down your face in salty streams. Shoulders sagging under the weight of a 3 ½–year-old child who is riding you like a pachyderm. Storm clouds turning the sky plum purple. Seventeen million people encroaching on your personal space. Seventeen million people who smell funny and like to stop suddenly in your path, causing the 3 ½-year-old child on your shoulders to catapult into the shark tank.
Only a general — a great general, a grand and glorious general — could navigate that and bring the troops back alive. Such a man would grip the land with a steely gaze, jam a fat stogy the size of a salami in his mouth, and bark out commands like: “Men, we must march toward the penguin exhibit with gusto!” or “Mam, your Britney Spears T-shirt is two sizes too small. Now fish my daughter out of that pool.”
As I navigated the hordes at Sea World, I became that general. A military tactician. A strategist. Someone who grabbed control of the situation and said strong and forceful things like, “Shamu starts in five. Let’s roll, maggots.”
That could have been Patton or Schwarzkopf.
We took off for a weekend with another couple and their two kids. They are easy travelers, and after our children have finished shoving each other into traffic or off hotel balconies, they get along great. It was a good trip, aside from the minor heat stroke and the fact that I forgot to pack my boxer shorts. That made it a little more interesting, not to mention revealing. I know of at least one woman who will never look at Orlando the same way.
We spent the day at Sea World trooping around huge swarms of Brazilian tour groups, British tourists so badly sunburned that it scalded our eyes just to look at them, and all manner of others who walk with the kind of blinding speed usually reserved for mountain glaciers.
But a good general won’t be deterred by human logjams. He’ll plow through while pushing two kids in a Sea World buggy that must have been previously used for hauling iron ore out of mine shafts. A big beast like that — combined with a total disregard for your fellow man — will do wonders for getting to where you need to go in a hurry.
I’m driven and focused. I don’t navigate crowds, but attack them, bobbing in and out of people, and rolling over them when I have to.
“Stroller coming through, folks,” I yelled as people were flung out of the way and ankles crushed. “Don’t make me break out the tear gas.”
Especially if it’s threatening to rain, I won’t give a second thought to leaving a man behind. I was pushing the stroller with my daughter and our friends’ son, Jack, when the little fella’ asked where his mother was.
“Boy,” I told him, “it’s fair to say she’s probably gone forever. Take heart and I’ll get you a new one.”
A good general makes plans and gives clear directions — “No, we’re not going to the walrus show. We’re going to the beer tent” — and a good general can get a good three bites of ice cream down unnoticed before handing it over to his child.
Sometimes I would leave the crew behind to scout out the situation and formulate a new campaign. “OK, the dolphin show is on the other side of that hill. Now, it’s going to be tight as there’s a troop of Brazilians camped at a ice cream stand and a woman in a moumou with a kid who’s throwing up what looks like sardines. We may not all make it back.”
But a good general always trudges on, immune to it all, fighting through it without a single complaint or a hint of agitation. He enjoys it, lives for it — loves it! — even if he forgot his boxer shorts.