Mountain Magic

An amusement park can be magical place. I'm not necessarily talking about Disneyland. I have nothing specifically against Disneyland, and it's a fine place to go if I've got nothing else to do. (Of course, it seems that most of the things I have done in my life have happened as a result of me deciding I had nothing better to do at the moment, so maybe that's not a very convincing argument). The magic for me at an amusement park is derived from the rush of the rides, the rush of eating a burger for three times its value, the rush of waiting in line for hours next to people that smell like mushrooms, and the rush of building a closer relationship with my phone. That's right. My phone. Magic Mountain last weekend provided me with all of these things, something Disneyland has never done.
At the beginning of the day, I experienced the Screamer ride with all its loopdy loops and silly twists. Since there was no line yet, my group decided to stay in our seats and ride it a second time. As our seats slowly clicked to the top of the ride, I realized my shorts had freed my cell phone from my pocket. I immediately mourned its loss by cursing the ride, my shorts, and my sorry life. As the roller coaster car clicked closer and closer to the top, the annoying people in the seats behind started yelling at me. I was about to curse them too, but then I realized they were shouting that my cell phone was wedged underneath a bar behind my seat, hanging on for dear life (bless its little heart).

Due to the constraints of the seats, I was unable to see behind me. I reached behind me quickly but could not locate it. With time running out and the car clicking to the top, I felt like the guy on the TV show that opens the ticking case and finds a bomb with ten seconds left and then somehow miraculously locates a pair of wire cutters that he just happened to be carrying and cuts the green wire (which just happens to be the correct wire even though everyone told him to cut the red wire). I decided to reach behind me again, this time using the force (and the shouts of the people behind me) to locate it. With less than twenty seconds left, I finally snatched my cell phone, saving it from a 30-foot drop that would have been its final resting place (since it seemed like nobody ever cleaned that part of the park). Then the ride stopped and the loudspeaker yelled at me for unbuckling my belt, which I did while I was panicking and cursing, even though it didn't help one bit to have it unbuckled. That kind of makes the story a little anti-climatic, but I learned a valuable lesson. It pays to curse when things aren't going your way. I'd like to say I learned not to take my phone for granted, but it would be hard to back that one up since I lost it again on another ride later in the day.