The Tragedy of the Big Kahuna

As you may recall from “THERE’S ANOTHER DOG!” Melissa hates – and I do mean hates – Six Flags Saint Louis. In fact, she hates Six Flags so much that she adamantly refuses to even call it by its name, instead only referring to it as the “Death House.”

You probably assumed she calls it this because of a fear of rollercoasters or heights or some such phobia and the thought that if she rides any such ride she’d die. Well, you’d only be partially correct. Yes, she does hate rollercoasters, just the sight of them terrifies her, but it’s every bit a motion thing as it is a mind one for my dear Melissa.

She’ll ride the coasters at Disney because of the facades placed around the tracks to ensure that it isn’t just a steel or wooden frame suspended in the air like at Six Flags, but she still isn’t about the abrupt and rapid motion. She’ll also argue – quite correctly I might add – that the rollercoasters at Six Flags are far more intense than anything at Disney. The real reason she calls Six Flags the Death House though has nearly nothing to do with all this, but everything to do with the fact that her soul has died once for each of the three times she’s been there.

The three time death of her soul very much reminds me of Voldemort’s Horcruxes in the Harry Potter series, only this isn’t a series of trinkets and artifacts all near and dear to her. This is more like every single time she’s gone to Six Flags something traumatizing has happened that has killed part of her soul, or as I can’t help but think of it, one of her Horcruxes.

The first “death” Melissa experienced at Six Flags Saint Louis was undeniably the worst of the three. Having been there to witness the horror of each, I can assure you this one was the most devastating. Even when combining the other two, they still fail to equate to the intensity of the first.

It was the summer following eighth grade and Melissa and I, along with my brother, Chris, and our middle school friend, Milena, all went to Six Flags for the day. Well, at the time the Hurricane Harbor waterpark was brand new and all the rage, so naturally, the four of us had to go.

We enjoyed the wave pool, the lazy river, a handful of individual slides, but decided it was finally time for the four of us to take on the Big Kahuna, their family raft ride. The line was quite long for this, but we didn’t mind, we were all excited for the experience. Well, an experience is definitely what we got.

After quite a while we had finally reached the top of the tower and it was our time to board. The attentive Six Flags staff held the large circular raft in place as we each boarded individually. I climbed in, followed by Chris, and then Milena, but just as Melissa was maneuvering to do so, the Six Flags worker, who couldn’t have been older than seventeen, stopped her.

“I’m sorry, but I can’t let you go down with those on,” he said indicating to the pair of jean shorts, or “jorts,” Melissa was wearing on the outside of her swimming suit.

Again, if you’ll remember from “THERE’S ANOTHER DOG!” she wore jorts that day too, so it sounds an awful lot to me like maybe jorts is the real enemy here, not Six Flags. She swears she’ll never go again, but if she does, she’ll have to be sure to wear something else and see if her experience improves whatsoever.

ANYWAY… Melissa froze solid in place at his words, standing there in the foot or so of running water looking down at us in distress as the three of us sat in the raft looking up at her in surprise at this twist in the tale. She told the boy that she had worn her jorts all day, even on other water slides, but he told her the studs and hardware on her jorts could tear the fabric of this particular raft since it was made of a softer material than the others, so she would have to remove them.

Now Melissa had a one-piece swimsuit on, so it wasn’t like she was going to be naked on her lower half once she removed her beloved jorts, but the act of having to remove them publicly would be traumatizing to anyone, much less an incredibly self conscious eighth grader.

Melissa continued to stand there frozen in time, unsure of what course of action she should take. Either she removed the jorts in front of several dozen people and rode down the Big Kahuna with us or she turned around and walked past several hundred people and met us at the bottom. Neither was of interest to her at this moment. As she stood there deliberating, the worst possible thing happened.

“TAKE EM’ OFF SWEETHEART!” Yelled a husky voiced, beer-bellied man in a pair of SpongeBob SquarePants swimming trunks.

He might as well of hollered “AVADA KEDAVRA!” because in that moment he performed the killing curse on a young Melissa. Her soul left her body with the laughter from half the crowd that followed his yell. Melissa became even more rigid in her stance as the lifeguard politely pressured her to make a decision since she had brought the entire line to a standstill.

Milena, Chris, and I all encouraged her to just take her jorts off and ride down with us, but she wasn’t budging whatsoever. She just stood there like a newly minted fixture of the ride till the lifeguard got much more persistent and told her she had to make a choice. That was when she abruptly dropped her jorts to her ankles and rapidly climbed inside the raft causing the restless crowd behind us to cheer in response.

“Thank you and just be sure to hold on to those,” the lifeguard said kindly as though the last eight minutes didn’t just happen before he giving us a swift push down the watery chute.

I’ve actually had a Six Flags season pass every year since that summer (minus the California years and 2020) and I cannot discuss my trips with Melissa without her remarking coldly about the Tragedy of the Big Kahuna. Part of her soul died that day, but from its death, we got a story that she won’t let either of us ever forget.

Well, as always, THANK YOU so very much for reading! Hope you’ve enjoyed the new layout my dear California Brother, Sweet Baby Garrett, created for you all! PLEASE feel free to share any thoughts you might have about the story above in the comments below – or anything you wish to share at all! You all already know I love reading and responding to them! I’ll return next week with another all new blog, so until then, I hope you have THE BEST week ever!