Hopes and Dreams, Flushed.

In this day and age of click-bait, article headlines can be very misleading. Ten fashion mistakes that are aging! Six tips to make life better – you won’t believe number three! This woman switched lemon water for coffee and you won’t believe what happened (murder). 

It’s refreshing, then to come across an article that is perfectly summarized by the headline such as this one on the CBC website:

There are just so many things to say. One small detail though: it may be summer, and the rest of the country might be sweltering in a heat wave, but this earlier this week I had to turn on the furnace, so being naked in that weather seems like a poor choice. Well, that and possible theft of a Canada Post vehicle.

In any case, perhaps Canada Post vehicles are equipped with seat warmers. That is one image that I do not want to dwell on, so let’s move on.

The weather has turned now – just in time for Stampede, and if I may, let me direct you to my archived posts about dressing for the event, plus a shot of my rarely worn cowboy boots – and so yesterday we went to the local amusement park. It is our tradition to go on the first day of summer vacation, but that week was so weirdly set up, and also the weather was, shall we say, poor. For Canada Day weekend we were at my parents’ place at the lake – another tradition – and it was lovely, lots of fun, but the weather kiboshed some of our plans. We put the paddleboards in for the 2018 inaugural paddle, and had been in only twenty minutes before the rain – followed by hail – started.

Anyway, yesterday was a perfect day for the amusement park, and my friend (HI TARYN) came along with us which was a nice bonus for me. She captured my feelings about bumper cars perfectly in this shot:

GAME ON, you little fuckers.

Here I am, trash talking my own son.

My friend and I spent some time discussing something I’ve thought of often: how insane will the employees be by the end of the summer, saying the exact same thing every few minutes, only to be completely disregarded by patrons of the park? I have wondered this about Disney and Universal employees before as well – how many times a day can a person say “No running in the ride area” before they completely lose their reason? I mean, I say “watch your knees” about a hundred times a week, but it seems different somehow.

I was wondering about the bumper cars employees in particular, because no matter what they say, the rules are always completely disregarded. First, there is a great deal of signage all over the ride and lineup that states that no child under a certain height will be allowed to ride under any circumstances. The bumper cars have no seatbelts, and I imagine a small child could literally be tossed out of the car with a particularly boisterous bump. And yet. And yet every single time there is a parent with a tiny child who looks COMPLETELY SURPRISED and taken aback when the employee tells them the child cannot ride.

Second, the rule is that all cars need to drive in a clockwise fashion, in order to eliminate head-on collisions and, presumably, lawsuits. Every single time there is at least one park patron going in the wrong direction, ostensibly to cause head-on collisions. Every single time. Once, last year, the employee actually STOPPED the ride and refused to start it again until the appropriate direction was taken. Clearly the breaking point was reached for that fellow, like Michael Douglas in Falling Down.

Perhaps the signage in the ladies’ washroom was meant for the employees of the park:

You cannot flush hopes and dreams, people. Even if you find yourself in a terrible summer job where no one listens to you. The key, I think, is probably to just stop caring.

Oh, summer jobs. I was talking with some friends about the worst summer jobs we ever had and mine, hands down, was the summer that I was a beer sample girl. If you want to be harassed for your entire shift, ad infinitum, this is the job for you! I finally quit when the company got a Busch beer contract and I was required to wear a bathing suit to work. I mean, I got hassled enough wearing clothes; I could not feature what would happen if I was standing there, in a chilly room, wearing nothing but a swimsuit and heels. Even Miss America doesn’t do that anymore.