[Imported] A lapse in my perfection

A couple of months ago, I took what is known as a "sad and pathetic" coaster trip. Why is it sad and pathetic? Well, apart from being a trip based solely on getting to theme parks (you know, because visiting my sister on the trip was the detour), I went ALONE. Yep, just me. Three parks in three days in three hotels, and add in my sister's house and you have 23 hours of me driving by myself. Obsessive? I wouldn't call it so much "obsessive" as merely dedicated. Or maybe in love. And I hardly think wanting to marry a roller coaster qualifies as an obsession.

Anyway, Cedar point was the last park on my trip, and I can still remember coming in on the highway and seeing in the far off distance the wondrous skyline of "America's Roller Coast." Now, probably tied with Islands of Adventure Cedar point as arguably the most readily recognized skyline of a theme park in the world.

Probably because it looks like this.

And when I saw it for the first time in real life, I nearly had a convulsion. I was like a child on Christmas morning, a new mother meeting her newborn, a person eating food again after a 10 day fast, and God saw that it was good and the people said Amen.

I was SO excited when I finally pulled up that after parking I simply got out of my car and floated to the entrance as my joy acted like a solid cloud whisking me away to the place of my dreams. I was oblivious to the world around me except for the hundreds of feet of steel that stretched to the sky and towered over me, with various trains racing along the tracks with a roar that can only be described as...Angelic.

The haze that surrounded me and blocked off the real world was all fine and good while I was in the park. It was the sobering experience of walking back into the parking lot that brought my high to drastic low. Because while I was too busy squirting sunshine out of my rear end from ALL! THAT! JOY! I didn't think to pay any attention whatsoever to where I parked.

I think you can see where this is going.

It took me a good 20 minutes to actually admit that I lost my car, but even then I was just telling myself that my car simply ceased to exist on the current plane on which I stood. If you know me, then you know how I pride myself in both the ability to TYPE IN ALL CAPS and my acute and accurate sense of direction. I know where all things are at all times and if you were to drop me off blindfolded in the middle of the Bermuda Triangle I would not only find my way out of there by dinner, I'd also bring the all the passengers and crew members of the Mary Celeste with me. I'm that good.

But for whatever reason, my inner navigator was either broken or on vacation that day because I was simply unable to find my car. At the very least I knew that I was in the front half of the lot, and I must have walked up and down every aisle five or six times each while pointing my key/unlock thing in every direction and constantly pressing the alarm button. There were a few other wanderers that I saw meandering around during this time, and for awhile I felt a sense of mutual idiocy in that only nimrods like us could lose a car. But then when I'd hear THEIR alarms go off (for a brief moment thinking it was MY car, and OH the disappointment when I realized it wasn't) I'd continue my search now seething and loathing these people who DARED to find their car before I found mine. And to think I thought of them as my pathetic comrades.

After FORTY-FIVE MINUTES of fruitless and frustrated wandering and of listening to my sister laugh herself breathless at me (she was on the phone with me the entire time), I finally had to suck up my pride and ask for help. Yep, I went back to the entrance of the park and asked a worker for advice. They called a manager who took me in their van and drove me around. He asked what I drove, what color it was, and where my license plate was from ("Ohio? PA? Michigan?" "Ummm...North Carolina..." "Really? You came all this way by yourself?" "Yeah, I'm sad and pathetic like that."), and after about two minutes of being his upmost embarrassed passenger, he spotted my car, I thanked him and got out, kissed my car right on the hood, and all was right in the world.

There isn't much of a point to this story other than the life lesson of "KNOW WHERE YOU PARK DANGIT" but I figured I'd share. It always feels good to read about other people's stupidity and for a brief moment think, "Well, at least I'm not THAT dumb."

You're welcome.