The whole thing started innocently enough. “Daddy. I want… Blizzard Beach. Please!”
The mancub goes for months on end without ever mentioning a water park, and now in the middle of January he decides it’s time to throw on a swimsuit and hit the water slides? Insanity! Unfortunately, once Ben gets an idea he’s like a dog with a bone, worrying away at it non-stop until all sanity has fled the building. I knew that I was going to have to brave the chilly (ha!) Central Florida winter and take him on some water slides.
There were two complicating factors, however, that would prevent me from fulfilling this particular request. First, I had been fighting a case of bronchitis for the previous three weeks – and as Sweet Brown will be happy to tell you, "Ain't nobody got time fo dat!" Second, I had managed to seriously damage myself that morning doing yard work. My back was out, I couldn't even stand up straight, and if I did stand up I would almost immediately fall over from the pain in my right knee. The thought of attempting to spend several hours on water slides and in wave pools was frankly terrifying.
And so it was that on that Saturday afternoon I put on my best lawyerly impersonation and countered Ben’s request with a slightly different offer. “How about if we go swimming?”
He immediately perked up, and with a winning smile he exclaimed, “Swimming! OK, go!!” The he disappeared in a blur of motion, only to reappear seemingly moments later wearing his swimsuit and carrying a towel.With a slight wince I chugged down four Ibuprofin pills for the back and knee pain, plus some methylprednisolone for my cough, and we were off to the local YMCA.
Sadly, I was soon to discover that our local Winter Garden branch closes their pool during December and January because it is not heated.Undaunted, we carried on down to the Doctor Phillips branch which has a heated pool that is open year-round. With unbridled glee, Benjamin jumped into the deep end of the lap pool while I hobbled over to a nice, comfy chair on the side where I could relax and read my book. Because we hadn't been to that particular pool in a good long time, I did take a few moments to chat with the two lifeguards just to let them know about Benjamin and to warn them that he was unlikely to respond to any direct instructions from them. I reassured the lifeguards that Ben was a very strong swimmer, and that I would be right thereto keep a close eye on him and make sure he wasn't bothering any other swimmers. With that, Ben spent more than three hours happily tooling around the pool while I spent some quality time with John Ajvide Lindqvist’s Harbour. A grand time was had by all.
I had hoped that this would satisfy Benjamin’s desire for visiting a water park, but I must admit I was not overly surprised when this was not the case. We were barely in the car, still leaving the YMCA parking lot, when Ben gazed at me hopefully and once again pleaded, “Daddy. I want... BLIZZARD BEACH! PLEASE!!”
By then the Advil was starting to wear off and I really just wanted to lie down in a dark room and whimper for a while. (Aw, poor me, can’t you just feel my pain?)Tragically Ben was not feeling particularly empathetic that evening, or the next day, and so I was subjected to a 24 hour barrage of requests for Blizzard Beach. At one point he very helpfully took me to his computer and showed me some pictures of the lazy river that circles the park, pointing out the big blue-and-white inner tubes and carefully intoning, “swimming…”
The best I could do was repeatedly promise him that on next Saturday I would take him to Blizzard Beach. I can’t say that he was particularly enamored with the wait,but he did seem to understand the plan. “Saturday. No school. Blizzard Beach!!”
I gather from speaking to his mother that Ben spent the next five days pounding away at that theme. “Saturday.No school. Just daddy. Blizzard Beach!” Over and over again on an endless loop.His teachers even sent home a note in his communications log, asking way Ben kept saying “Saturday” all day long at school.
You can imagine my pain when I went online to check hours and discovered that Blizzard Beach was actually closed until March for routine annual maintenance. I gave his mom the heads-up, and she started redirecting him. “Saturday. No school. Just daddy. Typhoon Lagoon!”
On Friday when I picked Ben up from school I was not greeted with a hug and kiss, nor with the usual cheerful, “Hi, daddy!” No, Ben simply took me by the hand, gazed deeply into my eyes, and then barked, “Typhoon Lagoon!!!”
“Yes, sweetheart, I love you too….”
I spent the rest of the evening reassuring him that yes, I really was going to take him to the water park the next day. No kidding, I promise, scout’s honor. Finally at bedtime, after one final reassurance, he looked me straight in the eyes and whispered, “Daddy… I love you…”
I could tell you what his first words were when he bounced out of bed the next morning, but I am afraid you would not be particularly shocked. Just scroll back up a few paragraphs, and then lather, rinse and repeat. By 10am we were loaded up and in the car, headed for Walt Disney World and Typhoon Lagoon. In January. The mind boggles.
I must say, as many times as I have been that water park over the years I have never, ever managed to park in the first row of the parking lot until that day. We walked through the turnstiles, and every single person we saw was a badge-wearing cast member. It really wasn't that cold, in fact back in my Seattle days I would have considered it downright balmy, and in a matter of minutes we were changed into our bathing suits and Ben was leading me to Castaway Creek. I would be shocked if there were more than a hundred or so guests in the entire park at that point, and it was downright eerie to float around the entire circumference of the lazy river without ever seeing another person in the water in front of us.
Ben, of course, did not care. He was grinning like a madman,laughing and splashing his way around Castaway Creek and then eventually into the big wave pool. When we first entered the lagoon it was churning away with bobbing waves, and Ben maneuvered himself right out in the deep end bouncing up and down like a cork. Then the waves started, and Ben gleefully threw himself into the giant breakers. Wave after wave crashed down on us, a new one every ninety seconds or so, and Ben was in the thick of it for more than an hour.Finally exhaustion set in, and he took my hand and led me back to the changing room. He was satisfied, yes, and tired as well. Maybe I am fooling myself, but I thought I also saw a measure of relief in his eyes too. I know that he gets frustrated with these obsessions, and although he has become better over the years at coping and redirecting himself he can still get trapped in what must be a terrible internal struggle. The best word I could use to describe him in that moment is satiated. His brain had finally managed to get popped out of that particular rut and he was free to move on to the next thing.
I wonder what this weekend will bring?