I have four distinct memories of going to waterparks as a child: 1) Nearly being drowned by a crush of friends in the deep end of the wave pool; 2) burning to such a crisp that I looked like a strip of bacon (and smelled like it, too;) 3) drinking no water, aside from what I swallowed while being drowned in the wave pool; and 4) putting my towel down on a beach chair and never \u2014\u00a0ever! \u2014\u00a0finding it again.<\/p>\n
I grew up in Tampa, and many weekends were spent at Adventure Island. My mother would drop my brother, me and a couple friends off with a towel, a glob of sunscreen to share and some wadded up money we were supposed to use for lunch. (We inevitably blew it at the arcade.) <\/p>\n
In summer, we lived at waterparks. In Florida you are required to attend waterparks. It\u2019s the official state bird.
\nBut my daughter, now 10, had never been to one. (When you live close to the Atlantic Ocean, who needs fake waves?) <\/p>\n
So when we traveled to Orlando this past weekend so my wife could attend a conference, the two of us visited Aquatica, a waterworld filled with slides, wave pools, lazy rivers and tourists wearing odd bathing suits that leave nothing to the imagination.
\n<\/p>\n
It brought back all those memories of childhood, especially as my wife drilled us on the day: Don\u2019t go in the deep end of the wave pool \u2026 you\u2019ll drown; apply sunscreen every 13 seconds \u2026 or you\u2019ll get skin cancer; drink lots of water \u2026 or your kidneys will fail; and don\u2019t, DON\u2019T, lose your towels.<\/p>\n
Major, major responsibilities. I mean, everyone\u2019s towels look the same!<\/p>\n
She then issued one final warning before trooping off to her conference: \u201cMake sure you don\u2019t lose her.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cLose her!?!\u201d I said. \u201cShe\u2019s 10. She\u2019s already lost!\u201d <\/p>\n
Not the right answer. <\/p>\n
But as the door shut, I realized the significance of my responsibility. The seriousness of my situation. I\u2019m a pretty good parent, but my responsibility in the water is usually confined to creating chaos, fun and excitement. My wife\u2019s is to rush in and scream, \u201cDID YOU NOTICE YOUR CHILD HASN\u2019T COME UP FOR AIR IN 5 MINUTES!!!\u201d<\/p>\n
Now I needed to be the responsible one. It started in the hotel room when my daughter said, \u201cYou need to put my hair in a French braid.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cExcuse me \u2026 a WHAT!?!\u201d I said. <\/p>\n
We were drowning already. <\/p>\n
\u201cToday, we must turn over a new leaf,\u201d I told myself as we entered the park. And I pulled it off. We went in the deep end of the wave pool, but came out unscathed. The closest we came to drowning was in the flood of sunscreen I applied throughout the day. We regularly drank un-chlorinated water, and lo and behold, I even found our towels. <\/p>\n
Hooray for me! (Although, we did spend all of our lunch money in the arcade.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I have four distinct memories of going to waterparks as a child: 1) Nearly being drowned by a crush of friends in the deep end of the wave pool; 2) burning to such a crisp that I looked like a strip of bacon (and smelled like it, too;) 3) drinking no water, aside from what I swallowed while being drowned in the wave pool; and 4) putting my towel down on a beach chair and never \u2014\u00a0ever! \u2014\u00a0finding it again. I grew up in Tampa, and many weekends were spent at Adventure Island. My mother would drop my brother, me and a couple friends off with a towel, a glob of sunscreen to share and some wadded up money we were supposed to use for lunch. (We inevitably blew it at the arcade.) In summer, we lived at waterparks. In Florida you are required to attend waterparks. It\u2019s the official state bird. But my daughter, now 10, had never been to one. (When you live close to the Atlantic Ocean, who needs fake waves?) So when we traveled to Orlando this past weekend so my wife could attend a conference, the two of us visited Aquatica, a waterworld filled with slides, wave pools, lazy rivers and tourists wearing odd bathing suits that leave nothing to the imagination.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[554,562,561,558,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1501","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2016-nutshells","category-childhood","category-family","category-florida","category-parenthoodandchildren"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1501","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1501"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1501\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1502,"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1501\/revisions\/1502"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1501"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1501"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1501"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}