Theme parks touch our lives!

The house feels hot and itchy. The dog is shedding like he's got radiation poisoning. We have to get out! I decided that it was time for our annual trip to the theme park. We're sneaking because last year they kicked us out after my son used a ketchup pump to make a mess out of the handicapped bathroom. I told him that from now on, if he wants to ketchup a bathroom he'll have to stomp on packets!

I stopped off at this one shitty gas station, the type where you usually have to complain about the empty glass cleaner tubs in the service area. But this time the tubs were brimming. I grabbed the squeegee out impulsively and the shit gushed blue cleaner all over the pants and shoes of some man who had been standing there pulling paper towels out of the dispenser. He yelled something.

I realized that I should have waited until he was done before I grabbed that squeegee. Unfortunately I had just finished watching Pulp Fiction while smoking over a pile of my children's freshly laundered clothing. Something about that movie makes me want to act bad ass. I left the station with a wet foot, and the satisfaction that comes from kicking the balls of a angry man who had every right to be mad!

It's fun to visit theme parks, laughing and sharing your own memories with your kids. Mine loved hearing about the time I swiped a mascot costume and stumbled around the entrance fondling the mouths of strangers. There was that hot summer night when I opened a can of potato soup at the top of a roller coaster. Or the morning I shot up heroin and rode the gondola all day in the fetal position

You start to feel old when the rides start kicking your ass. I remember how, in younger days, we'd jab at roller coaster safety equipment with sharpened screwdrivers. Sleazy men would ask for help with their flimsy safety bar while sportin' some major wood. Later those men would sit hunching on a bench near the kiddie rides just leafing through porno mags, and nobody would say nothing!

These newer rides miss the point. I'll have to take my kids to a State Fair if I want them to learn the value of barfing straight back into your own face on a centrifuge ride. Or the delight of luring other kids away from their parents and putting them on terrifying rides. The mystery of finding an out-of-the-way old local fair that will still let you powerwash the crack of your ass with a reverse, bent-over flume ride.

I sometimes wish this place was more like those old fashioned theme parks, with the kind of magic that insipires people walk around with their hand in their lover's back pocket, everybody wearing those small loose shorts that offer occasional peeks of hairy junk. It's an experience so timeless, you'll want to do some poppers, gamble on a round of Skee-ball, and then use a straight razor to teach preteens some manners.