Saturday, June 27, 2015

Waiting

I have a long and difficult history with waiting in lines.  Lines are very much like commuting to my mind - suffering that must be endured for many types of enjoyment.  It is a way of weeding out those who aren't really dedicated to the activity in question, of getting people who will only ride the roller coaster non stop to just stay home so the hardcore folks can do it.  Many people would happily move to the suburbs if they could only get to work in five minutes, just as I would love to get flipped upside down and zoom around if I could avoid standing on concrete pads bordered by metal rails for hours on end.

This weekend I went to Centre Island with my parents and Elli.  It was a perfect day for it, around 20 degrees and sunny.  Warm enough to wear shorts and tshirts but cool enough that nobody was sweating and suffering.  Couldn't ask for more... except that those same conditions led lots of other people to show up and clog everything up for us.  We spent about twenty minutes on the rides in total and about two hours in lines of various types waiting to get tickets and waiting for the rides themselves.

My instinctive reaction is to curse and swear and refuse to be involved in such madness.  Can any ride be amazing enough to warrant such indignities?  I could be killing monsters on the internet after all and that is fun all the time, no lines required!

There are mitigating circumstances of course.  While my mom was waiting in line with Elli I got to talk to my dad and vice versa which is actually the point of the thing.  Varied conversations with shifting groups of people is a good way to pass the time, and catching up is really the thing I want to do.  The main complaint should be that I am doing so while standing in a line in a crowd instead of happily ensconced in my chair at home.  Of course Elli was more than eager to stand in outrageous lines to have her three minutes of thrills but that is at least in part because she still isn't aware of just how much the rides *cost*.

Someday she will want to go to theme parks herself I imagine and then I look forward to watching her try to figure out the cost for herself.  Is it really worth eight hours of flipping burgers at McDonalds to stand around for a couple hours and get a few minutes of thrills?  Those sorts of calculations are the thing that excites me as a parent.  I want to see what she does, find out how much she emulates me, discover what she is really like when she begins to come out from under my shadow.  Plus I look forward to being able to impart nuggets of wisdom!  Which, I can only assume, she will largely ignore.  She will learn by screwing up and dealing with the blowback like all of us.

Until she is that independent though I suspect I will be stuck waiting in lines.

5 comments:

  1. This is a solvable problem: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disney's_Fastpass

    Snuggles

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    1. It keeps you out of the lines, which is nice, but you still have the issue that you spend most of your time not on the ride. A big improvement though.

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  2. If only you were available on weekdays when the lines are shorter. Maybe when you retire from commuting to your full-time job...

    Wait a second...

    Given that you could easily attend on other days, arguably, as I have been told with my downtown commute by car, you are part of the problem here. All those other people have to wait longer because you want to go when it's busy. :-)

    I completely share your pain on lines. Others do not seem to understand that life is going by while I wait. It's excruciating.

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    1. Ah, but the issue is not when *I* am available, but rather when my child is available. I would happily take her during the week, except that is when she is booked doing the things that everyone else is doing too!

      I liked retail hours in some ways - I got to have weekdays off and going to amusement parks and such was so much better that way.

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  3. Btw if you were to take Elli out of school on a random day in June, you wouldn't damage her education. Or so says the stay at home dad I know and love ....;)

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