"Don't jump that fence!"
Thus spake my girlfriend when I was eighteen.

It was my summer before going to university, and I worked at am amusement park. It was overall mind-numbingly dull, though working there did offer me a lot of people-watching opportunities. It's an interesting cross-section of humanity that frequents such places, from teenagers feeling the heady freedom of being away from the dreaded parents to young families with small children to middle-aged people reliving their days of rollercoasters and bad food. That part of the job I actually enjoyed, little bits of voyeurism into the lives of other people. I was all but invisible to them, just another part of the equipment, so I could watch them in their unguarded moments.

But that's beside the point.

One night I was out drinking with my co-workers from the park and our respective girlfriends. Someone suggested climbing the fence at about one in the morning, which sounded like a fun thing to do to our booze-addled teenage minds. So nothing would do but to clamber over the six foot chain link fence and go down the humongous slide up near the front.

The slide was probably about sixty or seventy feet high (about 20 meters for you metric types) and made of fiberglass with six troughs to slide in. There was a small slope at the top to get you going, then a very large drop followed by a rise, typically just enough to slow the rider to a reasonable speed by the end. You rode down in a burlap sack with a plastic coating to which had been sewn a chunk of carpeting for the bottom. The slide was waxed daily to give it a good speed so that people didn't get stuck partly down.

We grabbed our carpets and started up the stairs. One of the guys reached over and felt the slide. "Hey, it's all wet! The dew is on it!"

"No problem," slurred another. "Flip the bag over so the smooth side is down and hydroplane."

Brilliant! we thought as we climbed onto the top platform. We all put our bags in troughs and sat there for a moment, each working up the courage to be the first. Finally one guy let out a whoop and pushed off. He zoomed down the initial slope and got airborne over the main drop.

"Holy shit!" I eagerly pushed off and similarly zipped down after him. And got airborne.

The bottom of the drop slammed into me, pressing me flat. I flew up the incline, got airborne again, and crashed into the wooden fence at the bottom. Next to me lay a crumpled heap that was the first guy. "Ffffffuuuuuuu-"

A rumble announced the approach of the other guys. "Oh shit!" We both rolled to the sides just as more bodies hit the fence and collapsed into groaning heaps.

Utterly sober, we put the bags back and returned to the fence, which we had to climb in our battered condition.

Shouldn't have jumped that fence...
( The Resident Loon Not a demographic. Do not measure., Fri 16 Nov 2012, 12:44, Reply)