Schliterbahn

The events that occurred as follows are a true testament to my father’s parenting style.  Loose, easy going and manic.  I love my dad, I really do, but looking back I can’t believe the shit that he did.  The things he thought were ok for us to do.  The ways in which he did them.  So many memories, so many slow, disappointed shakes of the head when recalling them. 

I don’t want to overanalyze.  I don’t want to point fingers.  Yeah, shit could have been better.  But more or less it was pretty good.  This is all meant to be a family folklore, stories and memories written down to be cherished and enjoyed by me and my siblings.  And when recalling such memories and putting them to paper I am often shocked and what actually occurred.  And what my father allowed.  At what he thought was ok.  That’s it.  I don’t blame him for anything.  I don’t hold any ill will.  He did the best, I hope, that he could in the ways that he saw fit.  Nothing more, nothing less.  I wouldn’t be who I am today if it was not for experiences such as this.

And this memory started out as a trip down to Texas.  

All of my fathers family is in Texas, specifically Corpus Christi.  And all of my fathers brothers and sisters live within the city limits yet rarely speak to each other.  This is due to the infighting, blaming, and general ill will that they have towards one another.  A lot of petty shit.  Small things that grow, bigger and bigger, like tree roots.  Sure, that three year old pine tree looks great next to the house, but give it ten years and its roots will be thoroughly fucking the foundation up.  My extended family’s foundation is really fucked up.

And again, I never really figured out what exactly my dad was running away from.  I know why he moved up to Ohio but I don’t know why he has stayed.  After my mother and him got married they lived in a little house and had three kids, us.  And that particular house was in a really shitty part of Houston, people were getting killed and whatnot around us.  This, understandably, made my mom upset and combined with her home sicknesses and longing to be close to her family they moved up to Ohio.  And that is where we have been ever since.

But now that were adults, out of the home, why has my father not moved back?  When we were growing up we heard, constantly, how much he hated Ohio.  How shitty it was.  How horrible it was.  How bad the people were.  The sky sucked in Ohio.  The air had the faint smell of fart.  He just straight up hated it.  And he loved Texas.  Texas was his home.  Thinking back he now sounded like an old timer longing for the days of yore.  But he still hasn’t gone back.  Because he is running; from what I will never know.  But I digress.

Because of living in Ohio, and my father’s general avoidance of his family, we never really got to see them that often.  On average, we have visited his family about once every four years or so.  I could pass my cousins on the street and I wouldn’t recognize them.  I know only a handful of names and faces.  .  But on this particular memory we were on the way to visit the fam.  And we were pumped.

My siblings and I were still all very young at this point.  And this was our first vacation with just  dad.  The excitement was palpable.  A week and a half with dad.  We loved hanging with our pops and this seemed like heaven on Earth.  And more or less it was.  On the lead up to Schliterbahn we saw men in black in Tennessee.  We swam in a giant swimming pool in an empty Tudor style motel.  We ate Popeyes fried chicken until we were sick and comatose.  We watched HBO.  We drove and laughed and had a great time.  And then, once in Texas, we came to Schliterbahn.

For those of you unfamiliar Schliterbahn is a giant waterpark down in Texas.  Its huge.  Like really, really big.  And, since it was the middle of July, it was packed.  Texas is hot as fuck and this day was no exception.  People flocked from all over the state, the country, to take this waterpark in.  It is, I suppose, the Cedar Point of water parks.  Now that’s saying something.

And my father, being my father, was grossly underprepared for this day.  He didn’t have swim trunks so he had to wear athletic shorts.  No problem.  No biggie.  People wouldn’t know the difference, and if they did, fuck em.  He didn’t bring any towels.  We didn’t have a cooler full of treats.  But fuck it, what were we milonaires?  Right after we got done changing in the locker room my dad bent over to pick up his shoes.  His athletic shorts, his one pair, ripped straight down the ass.  It was hilarious and my brother and I rolled with laughter.  My dad laughed too.  Little did we know of the Omen, the symbolism, this tear meant for the day.

Once we changed and geared up with the little gear we had we headed out into the park.  My father, so as to not have his ass exposed to everyone, was forced to wear his under wear under his shorts.  And we walked around and took it all in.  The park grounds were expansive.  The map was of little use.  This place was big and it was a maze of fun.  There were a plethora of rides and wavepools and tubes and slides.  There were lazy rivers.  Not one lazy river but lazy rivers.  That’s something.  It was insane.  My little mind could barely comprehend how magical this place was.  I wanted to ride everything that we came across before I was distracted by the next best thing just right next door.  I couldn’t handle it.  Iris and Luke couldn’t handle it.  It was like dope being shot straight into my little head, right in the frontal cortex.  And then we saw the lines.

The lines, the lines, all the god damn lines.  It was a crushing blow.  It took my breath a way.  The weak sauce shit, yeah no lines.  The heavy stuff, the super fun stuff, lines up the wazoo.  I was too young to fully understand what we were going to encounter on this hot ass day in the middle of the Texas summer.  Everyone was there.  Or at least it felt like it.  And as such, there were lines, hour long lines, for nearly every ride and amusement.  The lazy rivers were even filled to the brim to the point of near anarchy.  People giving elbows and underwater kicks for space.  The water, once cool and refreshing  was now warm from children’s piss and the mass of bodies polluting it with their heat.  My heaven, our heaven, was slowly turning into hell.  But in true Sauceda fashion we made the best of it because the tickets were expensive as fuck.  We weren’t going anywhere and as such we gave into our fate.  Whatever it may be.

After taking it all and sampling the atmosphere we came to a conclusion: we needed to split up.  Because of our respective ages at this time Luke was still very young, like first or second grade young, and Iris and I were just a bit older.  But not much.  Due to our discrepancy in ages our tastes had started to diverge.  Iris and I yearned for the harder, faster, funner rides that this water park mecca had to offer.  Lil bro Luke wanted to take it a bit slower.  He focused more on the wading pools and water infused playgrounds and jungle gyms scattered throughout.  And our father, who was adversed to water and its myriad of recreational activities, wanted to take it slow as well. 

Why my dad hates water, I will never truly know.  What I do know is that it stemmed, in part, from a past childhood trauma that he experienced involving his brother Sonny.  Apparently, as he tells it, it was his first time at a lake.  He, like most children, was excited and nervous to try his hand in the aquatic arts.  That nearly horrible combination of emotions, ripping at your innards, making you both afraid and excited all at once.  The only problem was that he did not know how to swim.  Sonny alleviated this conundrum by grabbing my father, walking to the end of the dock, and throwing him in.  And by God did he learn how to swim that day.  This memory, sadly, has tainted my father’s view of all water based recreation.  But, like with everything my dad says, it must be taken with a grain of salt.  Rather, a salt shaker.  

Four people, divided, with differing tastes and attitudes facing the common problem that lay at hand.  What options were there but to split up?  And that is exactly what we did.  Except, looking back, there were some issues.  One can be blamed on the excitement.  Once we had discussed what was to come and agreed on the terms, my and Iris’s mind must have shut down.  Imploded from excitement.  We were in overdrive.  This would have never, ever passed with my hella controlling mother, this modicum of responsibility, this bread crumb of independence.  And it retrospect it probably shouldn’t have happened with my father.  But nevertheless we were buck wild and ready to run free.  As such, we never discussed with my dad when we were to meet up, and where we were to meet up for that matter. 

Again, where does the blame lie?  Granted, dad probably should have never let us diverge, but he did.  And since he did, you would think that he would have had the foresight to think of how we were going to find each other again.  But, I cannot lay all the fault on my father, because we should have thought of this as well. 

Coupled with this was the time that we were living in as well.  Again, I feel old as fuck for writing this, but cell phones were still very much a novelty.  Swanky swanksters had them in their cars, with the pig tail antenna announcing to the world how fucking awesome they were.  The main craze sweeping the nation at this point in the technological timeline was beepers.  My father had a beeper.  Drug dealers had beepers.  Wall street hot shots had beepers.  It was all the rage and I thought they were cool as fuck, even though now the concept is quite antiquated.  But, since we were on vacation, my dad did not have his beeper with him.  Today, if this were to happen, alls you would have to do would be to borrow some ones phone, text whoever you were looking for and shit would again be kosher.  Back then, we didn’t know what the fuck was to come.

So, to recap, here is where were at: we walk around Schliterbahn, realize our group wants different things, decide to split up after not thoroughly discussing anything of relevance in order to find each other again, and then run wild.  And running wild we did.  Me and Iris went all over the park and had the time of our lives, lines be damned.  We felt like adults and god damnit if we didn’t act like em.  We balanced checkbooks.  We held doors open for strangers.  We stood around a water cooler and made chit chat.  We took out a mortgage on a house we could barely afford and lived paycheck to paycheck.  It was great.  But, after time, the dream started to fade. 

As you may know water parking it up can be a strenuous activity.  You have to climb stairs, all the stairs.  The adrenaline from the more adventurous rides begins to wear you down.  Your exposed, at all times, to the hot, summer Texas sun.  You are swimming or running or diving and generally living life to the fullest while at a water park.  This fast and loose lifestyle does begin to take its toll.  The thirst came first, creeping in from the periphery.  Your saliva starts to get thick, your throat a bit dry.  You wear out.  No problem-o, we just took a drink from the many water fountains scattered across the park.  But then the hunger started to set in.  And hunger is a different beast, it is one that hits fast and hard.

And when hunger set it we woke up from the dream.  The pains of hunger brought with it the horrible, painful truth of our current situation  We didn’t have any money, we were fucking kids.  And we were kids in a huge ass water park 1000 miles from home or anyone that could help us.  And we were kids that didn’t make a through plan of attack with our dad on how we were to find him again.  When we were to meet up, where we were to meet up.  Fear, so slowly, began to slither into our cores.  We started to freak the fuck out.

This once joyous place had turned against us.  Its size, once something to behold and admire, was now a curse, a big fuck you and good luck in finding anyone, let alone your father.  Looking back it kind of felt similar to when you take LSD or mushrooms and shit starts to go south.  You know shits about to get real bad but there’s not one god damn thing that you can do about it.  The once comfortable environment, full of loving friends, becomes sinister.  Everything becomes darker, everyone becomes more malevolent.  This is what Schilterbahn had become for us, my sister and I.

What were we to do, what were we to do?  The panic was controlled, kept at bay, for the first hour of searching for our father.  We reasoned to ourselves and one another, made it right with words.  Where were we, Africa, some slum in a former Soviet state?  No, we were in the USA.  We ain’t dying in this water park, not today.  The morale, though strained, remained for the most part positive as we walked and looked, walked and looked for our father.  All over the park, walking and looking for dad.

By the second hour of searching shit was whipped into a near frenzy.  We were hungry, starving, lost, tired and freaking the fuck out.  Our hierarchy of needs were not being met.  We stalked the grounds, scanning, searching, hoping to see our dad.  To hear his voice, elated, crying out amongst the crowds, ecstatic that he was reunited with his children.  But his voice did not come.  We didn’t know what to do but to keep doing what we were.  And that was walking, looking, scanning for our father.  Hoping and praying that we would find him.  But he was nowhere to be seen. 

And its funny, or sad based on your outlook and life views, because I just realized that I only pray when shit is really going sour, when I could really use some help.  Never for other people, never for world peace or whatever but only when my shits fucked and I could use an invisible hand.  I guess I am a greedy prayer person.  But I digress.

Once hour three rolled around we had mostly given up on ever seeing our father, resigned to our fate and ready to give ourselves over to whatever may come.  Iris tried to lie down and die on the pavement.  I thought about it, but through cracked dry lips encouraged her with words that we both knew were empty.  But on we went.  We were even hungrier, tireder, thirstier, and emotional drained, utterly and totally, by this point.  We were just going through the motions.  Slowly shuffling through the park, trying to look out through squinted eyes for our father, hoping he would see us and swoop us up.  We were defeated and deflated.

And then it happened, the moment we thought we would never experience again.  We heard it, faint at first, a shout followed by a cry.  We turned, dizzy from exhaustion and hunger, barely able to focus on the mass of people moving in and out of one another.  I saw read shorts, black hair, it looked like my father, but the man I knew was dead, lost somewhere over Shcliterbahn. 

The apparition came closer, closer.  And then it swooped us up, my sister and I, in a bone crunching hug.  It was our dad, our dad.  He had found his children and we had found our father.  

The relief, it was immense.  We sank into his arms.  That hug felt like it lasted for an hour.  All the tension, the fear, the grief melted away instantly.  Whatever had just happened no longer mattered because we were finally with our dad.  He took us back to the kiddie pool where little bro Luke was waiting and we got the fuck out of Schilterbahn and smashed on some Whataburger.  And what a meal it was.