(via hazelweatherfield)
This is actually a more personal post than a vignette, so I thought a more “traditional” reblog was in order.
The last time I was at a carnival, I went with one of my girlfriends. We wandered around for a while, and went on a few of the rides. We hit up the wheel and the log ride, and an almost-roller-coaster that didn’t quite suck but made a passable attempt at sucking.
Then we get to the swings. To be honest, they look pretty innocuous. You look up, you see people in swings sitting calmly and watching everything around them. Me, I look up and see the single bolt that holds you onto the machine that’s spinning you around at thirty miles an hour. Sometimes you’re as much as fifty feet above the ground. I don’t want to try and figure out how fast you’d be going when you hit the ground should that single bolt break, but I’m going to assume “faster than your body would like you to hit anything, ever.”
So I freaked out. My heart started beating, my palms got sweaty, my neck got itchy from the burn I was creating (wear sunscreen, kids), and I got light headed and jumpy. When I was on it, I held on for dear life to whatever was nearest me. It happened to be the chain that was connected to the bolt that kept me on the damnable thing. That wasn’t a lot of comfort to be pulled from them, but I did what I could to make myself calm.
The whole ride, I was certain I was going to die.
