“Sir. This is for children only.” The security guard looked about ready to zap me with that wicked-looking taser on his hip. On overreaction, really. I shifted on my plastic pony, whose cheaply-manufactured saddle indent groaned under my weight.
“Can I at least finish a couple more rotations?”
“No, sir, again: this is for children only. You’re upsetting the children around you.”
“With my presence? I’m not doing anything but sitting here.”
I shot a cursory glance at the sniveling little brats clinging to their parents’ tear-stained shirts around me. There was a particularly loud one astride an Arabian-themed elephant, wailing to the mother beside it that he was scared, Mommy! I really didn’t understand the big deal. God forbid a fully-grown adult experience the joys of a carousel once again. Let me tell you, I did not feel very joyful at that particular moment.
The platform screeched to a stop, the tinny jingle ending with a polite flourish. The kids around me, still sniveling, ambled reluctantly off the carousel as their parents shot dirty looks my way. I stayed put.
“Sir, this is the last time, please leave the carousel,” a female voice droned over the intercom.
I raised my voice at the disgruntled woman in the booth. “Why?? I’m a paying customer here.”
The security guard standing next to me shifted impatiently. “You’re too big for this ride.”
“Are you calling me fat?”
“No, sir”—he was getting quite exasperated now—“this is a theme park. For children. And the occasional nostalgic teenager. If you had a child with you, that would be a different case.”
“Does 32 count as a teenager?” I didn’t even know where I was going with this. I always fly by the seat of my pants. Or by the seat of a carousel horse, for this particular case.
He pursed his lips. “I don’t appreciate your attitude. Please exit the premises before we have to get forceful.”
“You’re gonna wrestle me out of a theme park, really? Fine. Try to take me, no really. I’ll be kicking and screaming bloody murder all the way to the main gate. You’ll have to gag me and drag me. Really won’t be a good look for Happy Days, I’ll tell you that much.”
Happy Days was the name of the amusement park, by the way. I basically grew up there. And they had all these fun little gimmicks: like all of their rides were shaped after fruits and vegetables and they had really pretty gardens with these stone statues. After a soul-draining eight years in a windowless corporate h*llhole, I really felt like I could use a little joy. But apparently it’s a crime to visit a children’s theme park as a scruffy, dead-eyed, 32-year-old without a child or fellow guest.
The security guard reached for his walkie talkie. “We’re gonna need as much backup as possible at the carousel, please.”
“Woahwoahwoah,” I raised my hands defensively. “Aren’t you being a little hasty?”
“Get off the damn horse!”
“What is happening here, Jenkins?” A thin woman in a pencil skirt strode up to us, her stiletto heels click-click-clicking on the wooden paneling. She had a very severe face, with a bun that pulled her eyelids tight, like the eye contraption thing in A Clockwork Orange. The bronze plaque on her shirt read “Sonia Chavez, Customer Service Manager.“
“They’re denying me my constitutional rights,” I said quickly.
She turned to the security guard. “Are you denying him his constitutional rights?”
“What?!”
“I’ll take that as a no.” She turned to me. “Sir, why are you here?”
“I wanted to ride the carousel.”
She cocked her head. “Are you one of those perverted creeps that loiter around elementary schools?”
I threw up my hands. “No!”
“Usually, adults find recreation in the comfort of their own homes. Maybe at bars or clubs. In conventional, socially acceptable spaces, sir.”
This lady really didn’t get it. I could tell by looking at her—she had left behind her childhood whimsy as soon as she could walk, gathered her hair in that severe bun as soon as her toddler wisps had grown out. They drove me crazy, people like that, they really did.
“What’s wrong with having a little childish fun?” I blurted out, far louder than I intended. She and the security guard recoiled. “I work a job where I don’t see the sun for most of the day, don’t talk to anyone outside my cubicle, and in general learn to resign myself to a life of a drone. Sometimes I wish AI would take my job, I’ll tell you that much.”
“You can do that somewhere outside of Happy Days, sir.”
“Have you always been such a stick-in-the-mud, Sonia?”
Sonia scowled. “No, sir, because I traded in my immaturity for voting rights as soon as possible.”
“Fine, then,” I said, trying to change tactics. This woman had some whimsy in her—some bone-thin emaciated creature of Whimsy shackled in the far basements of her cold, clinical mindspace—and I could smell it. “Let’s discuss it.”
And I patted the seat of the pink-and-teal mare right beside me.
“This is ridiculous,” Sonia scoffed under her breath.
“Come on. You don’t think I’m at least a little embarrassed to be sitting here, alone, at a children’s theme park? This feels as ridiculous for me as it looks for you, I can tell you that much. But God, lady, I am tired. I’m so damn tired of doing everything I can to be serious and respectable, avoiding ridicule like the plague. I just want one day—is that too much to ask for, one day?—where I can ride a carousel and pretend I’m eight again. Just one day to stop pretending that I like my soul-sucking job and my grown-up apartment and grey-painted walls. One day to pretend that—I don’t know—that I can feel like a kid again.”
Silence.
Sonia’s staring at me with cold black-ish eyes, her face immutable stone. She stays silent for so long I wonder if she heard me right. Or was going to have Jenkins blast me with his taser at any moment.
But then she says:
“I’m riding the turtle.”
I can’t help the big goofy smile that splits my face in two as she takes my helping hand to lower herself onto the turtle’s saddle on my right.
The security guard splutters. “Mrs. Chavez—”
“Oh shut up, Jenkins and get on the damn horse.”
Jenkins obediently climbs onto the horse.
“Take us for a couple more rotations, Lisa!” Sonia calls to the flabbergasted woman in the booth. “And make an announcement that the park’s closing for the day. Maintenance issues, or something along those lines.”
The carousel hums to life, the tinny jingle returning as the three of us start to slowly bounce up and down. Sonia looks like a fish out of water, her knuckles white around her turtle’s saddle-horn.
“Closing for the day?” I asked her.
“The kids have had their fun,” she says. “Call your friends, if you have any.”
“I have some, why?”
She looks at me, and smiles for the first time. It almost looks painful on her severe face.
“Because us adults deserve Happy Days, too.”