Today was the day that every 8th grade student anticipates with joy and delight. From the time they show up at kindergarten registration, the seed of the idea of today is planted in their heads, and incubated over the course of the next 9 school years. It is the stuff of legends, the anchor that keeps many of them in school, the zenith of their k-8 education.
It is Canobie Lake Field Trip Day!
Today at 9:00 AM, the yellow busses rolled out of the school parking lot and headed to that fried dough and teen body odor scented heaven in Salem New Hampshire.
I will not blog about my students, save to say that they were awesome. They were fabulous on the bus trips to and from the park. They enjoyed themselves responsibly at the park. They all showed up at the designated departure time and place as directed. They were great.
What prompts me to take to the web to chronicle my experiences at Canobie Lake Park is the fact that, once you step through the entrance turn styles, it is as though you've left 2011 behind and walked straight back into 1983.
The twice-life size statue of Michael Jackson sitting immediately in the entrance definitely sets the tone. I'm not sure what's going on with the statue's feet. Today, for the first time ever, I noticed that MJ's feet are about three times larger than need be for a statue of this size. Was Michael Jackson known to have suffered from the gout? Was he club-footed unbeknownst to me? Was he abusing podiatric steroids? All's I can say for sure is that this shit's disturbing.
The music issuing forth from the loudspeakers does nothing to dispel the myth that one has gone back about 28 years in time.
Tears for Fears. Duran Duran. Oingo Boingo. Thomas Dolby.
Rhianna? Beyonce? What's that?
At first, when I saw people decked out in Skidz...
or sporting neon mesh half shirts....
I thought for sure that there must be some specially designated 80's day that I hadn't been informed of. Damn, if only I had dug out my "Choose Life" t-shirt for the occasion! I was all set to approach an obese man in an ill-fitting wife beater with a decal of Don Johnson and Phillilp Michael Thomas in their Miami Vice roles and pat him on the back for his obvious good sense of humor, but then I saw a guy with a bad porn 'stache and a permed mullet and I knew this couldn't just be some ruse to elicit a few laughs at Canobie Lake Park. Who would intentionally groom themselves in this manner to garner a few chuckles? Clearly this man was SERIOUS and he thought he looked good. This was an image he'd been cultivating for some time...on purpose.
I refrained from approaching these "good sports" once I realized that this was, in fact, their current day style. New millennium (sorry, I can NEVER spell that word correctly, but you get my drift) be damned.
I want to wear my Quiet Riot fringed half shirt and damn you to hell if you don't like it!!
I saw all kinds of questionable characters today, including the following trademark Canobie Lake Guests:
The mom carting around a 2 day old baby in a papoose, not because it was more practical to manage the baby's diaper bags and other infant-related paraphernalia (another word I have NO clue how to spell, but use all the time), but to facilitate her chain smoking and ceaseless text messaging.
The guy with the two broken legs charging through the line of the Ultimate Frisbee ride and insisting that they could just attach his wheelchair to the ride with the standard office-issue rubber band he'd brought along for the occasion.
An elderly woman with National Geographic body parts sporting short shorts reading, "Hot Buttered" across the sagging derriere.
So, yes, you can enter Canobie Lake Park and feel like you've re-entered the fold of your own middle school experience without missing a beat.
The only difference, of course, is that Canobie Lake is not as "broke" as it used to be in the past.
Memba when the biggest thrill ride there was the Caterpillar? Or when their idea of landscape architecture was to fashionably place a trash barrel in the middle of the park?
Well, now Canobie Lake Park has found its way to 2011, even if its average guest has not.
Case in point...
They have just unveiled their new roller coaster, Untamed. And let me tell you, for a small piddly-arsed park in the middle of nowhere, NH, it's a pretty respectable roller coaster. I'm no Stephen Hawking. (My number sense is pretty much limited to knowing that a #1 G'Ranimal shirt matched a #1 G'Ranimal pair of pants), but I am pretty sure that the incline to the first hill is 90 degrees, and that the first drop is even more acute or whatever the hell you math people call it. I just call it straight up scary. And I don't need a slide rule or a compass to tell me that!
It's a pretty good coaster. OK, so I had to ride it next to a guy wearing an acid washed jeans jacket with a Kix patch ironed onto the back. So what?
Another thing that Canobie Lake has done to "keep with the times" is locate hand sanitzer dispensers at regular intervals throughout the park. This is much appreciated, especially since the restroom soap dispensers are frequently empty. However, I'd like to ask Canobie Lake park administrators to acknowledge that rancid body odor, as quaint and retro as that might be, is just not charming. Perhaps they could put automated deodorant dispensers alongside the hand sanitizer ones in order to eradicate the pervading odor of Teen Spirit from lingering on every breeze wafting through the park.
Anyway, I have to go rub some aloe on my Canobie Lake Chaperone farmer's sunburn.
Yes, I used sunblock, and lots of it. But there's only so much Neutrogena factor 55 can do in 6 hours of direct sunlight.
Hey, I could have gone all out 80's and used Hawaiian Tropic "SPF" 4 baby oil. But, in this day and age, a girl's gotta rub some intensive coverage under her off-the-shoulder Flashdance inspired sweatshirt!
