I know I’ve complained repeatedly about my feelings regarding waterparks.(See 9 Much Needed Waterpark Improvements and Excuse Me There’s a Turd in the Wavepool.) A reasonable person would think that I had exhausted all my rage and shame. But, you would be wrong because my vacation included a waterpark sojourn that resulted in one of the most embarrassing moments in the annuals of being me.

There were no advanced plans to go to a waterpark. It was never even on the vacation agenda. I, a naive, hopeful creature, thought this trip would be blissfully waterpark free,  But, all it took was for my daughter to spot a waterpark lurking way off in the distance from the 31st floor of our hotel to condemn me to the fate of going down the Spiral Flusher 2000. She begged to go and I caved and volunteered her father for the honor of escorting her.

My husband was too quick. He double crossed me and said he had already promised our son that he would take him to look at colleges in the area. Huh? Our son had just turned 15. He hasn’t even taken his PSAT and I still have to remind him to wear his retainer and use deodorant and they were going to look at colleges. Please, I didn’t believe that for a moment. But he had me, especially when my son perked up and said yes, they had talked about and he was excited.

That’s when I threw their smug faces a curve ball and said to my husband, “Oh, I’ll do the college thing. No worries, you can do the waterpark. Really, don’t you think it’s your turn to do the waterpark?”

Dang it, that didn’t work because my son quickly responded with,“But, I really want Dad to take me.”

Causing my husband just as quickly chimed in with, “You know father-son bonding time.”

They had me. It was low of my husband, exceeding low (and he would pay for it later, oh yes, he would pay) to play the “father son” card, but he did and I was screwed. I drew the short straw. I was going to yet another waterpark. I sighed, almost teared up and resigned myself to the fact that it was time to pull on my chocolate-brown, (well, it was brown when I bought it, but it had now, thanks to the wonders of  chlorine, taken on the hue of a Snookie spray tan) one piece, one more time.

Just when I thought things couldn’t get worse my 10-year-old got very excited and squealed, “Mom, I just looked up the waterpark on Dad’s phone and it’s not just a waterpark it’s an amusement park too! It’s got roller-coasters and everything.”  Oh sweet, sweet God of Atlantis what have you wrought? I thought as I choked back a sob.

Nothing and I mean nothing is worse than a hybrid water/amusement park. If you go strictly to an amusement park you get to be fully clothed and experience the wonder of cotton candy, funnel cake and vomit from the ghosts of rides past stuck to your hands, feet, face and neck and enjoy a continuous bout of nausea due to the G-force of the triple loop coaster.

If you go to a waterpark you’re mostly naked, barefoot and if you have any sense use the inner tubes for the rides as your fat camo. But, if you’re at a hybrid water/amusement park that means you get to strut your stuff in a swimsuit at the water zone and then lucky, lucky, you all you have to do is just put on a pair of tennis shoes with that swimsuit and you’re ready to walk around the amusement area.

Can you picture it? Is there anything less appealing? A mass of people waiting in line for the roller coaster clad only in swim-wear and tennis shoes, with wet, unregulated, body hair blowing in the steamy breeze. Yes, you could pull on a pair of shorts or please Lord, capris to walk around in, but all the amusement park rides include some kind of water grand finale. So, you’re wet all the time. Not refreshingly waterpark wet, but theme park recycled, brownish, non-potable, swamp water wet.

If you wear shorts or a beloved pair of capris (and people this is how I know there is a God because capris or crop pants have been in style for almost a decade -don’t tell me that’s not the work of a higher power) they get soaked and your inner thighs get to go “squish, squashy” all day as they work themselves into an extreme case of 3rd degree thigh burn due to excessive fabric friction. You are basically walking around in a crock pot of fermenting flesh stew seasoned with sweat and off brand hair care products.  Yummy, it’s not. But, off I go with a very excited daughter holding my hand.

We must have a plan I told her. “Let’s do the amusement park rides first and then the water zone. I don’t want to be flitting back and forth. We need to stay focused.” That plan lasted about 45 minutes. The lure of the waterpark slides keep calling. So our day went something like this: roller-coaster, log plume ride, rapid river ride, back to waterpark for body slides then back to roller-coaster for what my child described as a “blow dry.”

To mitigate my misery I people watched and keep a tally of tramp stamps versus belly tats. It’s while I was playing this mental agility game to past the time as my daughter downed  Dipping Dots that cost more than my first car that I noticed a woman in Uggs, freaking knee-high, fur-lined Uggs in triple digit heat. I was entranced. I couldn’t keep my eyes off of her. I needed to know more, like why in the hell you would wear Uggs in the middle of the summer to a water/amusement park? And not just that, but Uggs with a tankini. Who does that?

She looked maybe 40 and with those hot pink Uggs and her white swimsuit it was off-putting. She closely resembled a Benadryl capsule. I told my daughter I was going to go talk to the Crazy Ugg Lady who by this time was sitting just one picnic table over. My little one gave me attitude about it, but I said, “Hey, chill out. You have a bowl of Dipping Dots bigger than your head to eat.”  She shoveled more dots in her mouth and gave me the sigh/eye roll combo platter and watched me make my move to Uggs.

I got Uggs attention by how else, but commenting on her footwear. “Wow” I said, Uggs at a waterpark, aren’t you brave?”

She looked up at me and beamed. You would have thought I said, “Your royal highness you are a creature of beauty and perfection and bring light to a world plagued by darkness.” Let me tell you something, these Ugg chicks are easy. Note to guys who need a pick up line or serial killers – one comment about their boots and they’re yours.

She smiled at me and said, “Oh my God, I just love my Uggs so much I wear them everywhere! I even wore them when I gave birth.”

“Seriously,” I said, “Are you talking about a home birth or something or do you mean, feet, pardon, Uggs in stirrups, kind of birth?”

She laughed, “I wore these pink Uggs right here since I was having a girl and they were in stirrups for sure. That’s the way I roll! I have 23 pairs of Uggs and counting,” she proudly proclaimed.

This is when the evil forces that sometimes rule my life emerged. (Can you blame me?  I get a stirrup over-share and I’m not going to run with it.) So I said, “This is just so great seeing you here in your Uggs.  I write a blog called I Hug Uggs and I’m sure my readers would be dying to know how your love of Uggs trumps heat stroke?”

“What?” She said, “What do ya mean heat stroke?”

I replied, “It’s like hell out here and I’m sure your feet are on fire in those fur lined boots.” I said all this very slowly thinking she might already be in the early stages of some kind of a heat related health emergency.

She laughed and said, “Oh no, my feet are awesome. The wool sucks up the sweat.”  Then she began to take off one Ugg so she could show me her dry foot.  Ewww, I thought, but in the name of research I wanted to see if her foot really was dry so I stood still as her very much in need of a pedi-egg lower limb emerged and it was not just dripping sweat, but oozing, much like Niagara Falls oozies water.

Uggs seemed surprised to see her foot wet and then rammed her hand inside her boot for a secondary investigation. Her hand also come out slick with foot juice.

“Well, it looks like even the mighty Ugg can’t withstand 102 degrees at a theme park.”  I chirped.

She acted very sad, despondent even, so I added, “I mean what boot could. It’s beyond disgusting out here. If you had any other boot on I’m sure it would have been much, much worse.” That perked her right up and off she went on a passionate defense of her beloved Ugg.

God, I wish someone loved me as much as this woman loved her Australian sheep lined suede boots. Really, I could possible die happy right now if I knew someone in this big wide world of ours was that in love with me. No doubt she wants to rewrite the Declaration of Independence to read – Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Uggs!  I tried to be polite and listen, after all I had encouraged her, but finally I begged off claiming my daughter and I had to get back to the rides, specifically the Spiral Flusher 2000.

The Flusher lived up to it’s name. It was a gigantic toilet bowl that you approached via a mighty slide clocking about 40 miles per hour as you rode an inner-tube down a steep incline. When you hit the toilet bowl you would make like a turd and circle the drain, so to speak, a couple of times and then get plunged down a hole to an exit tube.

The line for the Flusher was long and you had to drag a double inner-tube up about 6 million flights of stairs.  My daughter really wanted to “get flushed” so we waited for close to 90 minutes behind a group of dudes that were ground zero for the man boob epidemic currently sweeping the country. These guys weren’t fat. They had that beefy, weight lifter look, kind of like the husbands in The Real Housewives of New Jersey. Their bodies said we lift weights, but might be skimping just a bit on the cardio portion of a workout. I attributed their B cup breast to steroids. Knowledge I accumulated from an episode of The Real Housewives of Orange County when Tamara’s son had to have breast reduction due to a steroid addiction. (Who says T.V. doesn’t educate?)

These busty dudes also had quite an impressive collection of tattoos. I was thinking at least two of the guys need to tattoo themselves a bra sooner than later. They had some mighty pert cleavage. I struck up a conversation with them because that’s what you do when you’re waiting in line right – talk in-depth to strangers about very personal issues?  I played the caring mother card and inquired first about their tats and then about their boobs. I just asked them right out. “Guys, what’s with the mammary muscle?”

I knew this would stump the dudes thus letting me explain to them in pseudo medical terms that they have a nice rack and probably could breast-feed an infant in a pinch or at the very least make a nice set of pacifiers. The young men explained to me that man boob was in. “It’s like a chest six pack.”

Gag, I thought. These guys are dumber than they look. I, for one, would never want to date a guy that had nicer breasts than me. Isn’t there enough competition on the boob front with females?  Do we have to start competing with the male of the species in the clevage category?  Because if we do I give up.  It’s bad enough I’m not even the 15th prettiest girl in the room, but now me – Cankles McHefty – has to consider dudes as participants in the Bust Bowl.

The whole icky boob thing was a foreshadowing of the disaster to come. Finally, after frying the sun it was my turn to board the double tube with my daughter and get flushed. I was in the back of the tube and my daughter was in the front. We took off fast and hit the toilet bowl portion of the ride screaming. We start circling the bowl and my daughter makes a rookie mistake. She thinks this is the end of the ride and abandons tube while we’re still circling the bowl. Her slim, lithe body gracefully slides down the exit tube. I do not.

The force of my daughter jumping off the tube causes me to be dumped out. Our tube is AWOL. I’m free floating, circling the bowl, bare breasted!!! The top on my one piece has been pushed down due to the water jets and pressure that make the tube circle the bowl. People, I’m riding the toilet bowl with my middle-aged, I’ve breast-fed two kids, one for longer than is socially acceptable in most 3rd world countries, girls stripped naked.

I try to grab the straps of my suit and pull it up while I circle the bowl. But, you weren’t meant to ride the bowl without a tube and my body is taking a beating. I then attempt to roll over on my stomach, like an harpooned Shamu, to disguise my topless self. Which results in my nipples are getting bitch slapped by the water jets. It was much worse than that case of mastitis I had when my son was 4 weeks old. The pain, oh the pain.

I finally cross my arms over my chest and ride out the agony of the toilet bowl. As I’m dumped down the exit tube I yank up my suit and try to make a quick exit. But no, the man boobs are waiting for me and laughing their asses off. I, with all the dignity I can muster, look them all in the eye and say, “Hey, you showed me yours, I showed you mine.  Jealous?”

I then walk away, my head held high, my spider veins glistening in the sun and my chest throbbing. I find my daughter and tell her it might just be time to call it a day.  My nipples and I have had enough.

*Attention Snarky Friends, I have a brand new book out and for a limited time only it’s just 99 cents for a heaping helping of Snark! You are now gazing at the second book in the Snarky in the Suburbs series – Snarky in the Suburbs Trouble In Texas. You can buy it for your Kindle or in paperback on Amazon.  It’s also available for the Nook or you can get it for your Kobo reader. Click on a link and give it a test read.  I hope you like it! 🙂