We walked around the fairgrounds for a while, trying to decide which ride to try out first. Because she was the youngest and most timid, it was up to Alicia to approve of any ride we were going to try. We stopped in front of the Magic Carpet ride, and Alicia agreed to give it a go.
If you are not familiar with this particular ride, let me try and explain how it works. There is a long row of seats that are connected to a high-backed platform. The seats have padded harness bars that come down on both shoulders and hold you in place while also giving you something to hold onto. The ride rotates clockwise, then switches to counter-clockwise at a rate that is fast enough to give your stomach butterflies.
We sat in two adjacent seats, and as soon as the harness bars started to come down, Alicia began to panic and plead "I don't want to do this! I don't want to do this!". I thought she would be ok. I expected her to recover quickly and to enjoy the ride as soon as it started. What I didn't expect was to look over at her as the ride began to rotate and see the nightmare-inducing image of a pale ghost-like head flopping around like a rag doll. To say the sight was disturbing would be an understatement.
I let go of the harness bar, reached my hand towards her, and in a panic asked "are you ok Alicia????" She didn't answer. Instead, she leaned her head down towards my arm, and the next thing I knew she was biting my forearm with alarming intensity. I think she may have started to shake from the effort (although that part could have been my imagination since the ride was shaking us all over the place anyway).
At this point I started to scream and wave the one arm that wasn't being gnawed on by my terrified sister. The ride operator looked at me for just a moment with a quizzical expression, but must have decided that I was enjoying the ride because he just looked away. Everyone on the ride was screaming and waving their arms, so what I was doing wasn't out of the ordinary.
I continued to scream and Alicia continued to bite my arm until we finally got the ride operator's attention again. He must have noticed Alicia's awkward head angle, because his face turned to horror and he quickly shut the ride down. The other people on the ride started to boo because they didn't know why the ride was cut short. Alicia released her hold on my arm and we both stepped off the ride. We were white-faced and wobbly-legged from leftover adrenaline and terror, and the boos were soon directed at us as people realized we were the reason why the ride had stopped early.
We didn't ride any more carnival rides that day. In fact, we never went to a carnival together again, because some experiences are simply not worth reliving. Don't hate me for sharing this one Alicia. :)
P.S. Alicia is no longer afraid of rides. However, I do have a sequel to this story that I will have to add next week (The White Roller Coaster ride at Lagoon).
Hahaha!
ReplyDelete