A weekend trip leads to four happy teens
Several days before I left for Southern California, I was ready
to back out of the whole deal. Somehow, I had agreed to take my
sons and their girlfriends on a weekend trip to Universal
Studios.
First of all, that meant I was willingly going to be driving in
Los Angeles. An absolutely terrifying thought. I was also going to
be responsible for two additional young people
– again, I remind you, in Los Angeles – and I was going to be
herding all of them through a loud and action-packed amusement
park.
A weekend trip leads to four happy teens
Several days before I left for Southern California, I was ready to back out of the whole deal. Somehow, I had agreed to take my sons and their girlfriends on a weekend trip to Universal Studios.
First of all, that meant I was willingly going to be driving in Los Angeles. An absolutely terrifying thought. I was also going to be responsible for two additional young people – again, I remind you, in Los Angeles – and I was going to be herding all of them through a loud and action-packed amusement park.
What was I thinking? Was this really how I wanted to spend my last summer weekend?
Well, what I was thinking, originally, was it would be a nice little getaway for the Nichols bunch. I had tried out quite a few ideas on the boys in previous months to see what they would be interested in. I started in Northern California and worked my way down.
When I came to Universal Studios, they showed signs of life, so that’s what I picked.
However, going anywhere for the weekend also meant that the girlfriends had to go along, since my older son is pretty much attached at the hip to his. And I couldn’t let one girlfriend go without the other going, just to be fair.
But this then meant we would all be crammed in one motel room, since all I could afford was one. I warned the girls about this, but it didn’t seem to discourage them.
So off we went into the land of smog, armed with sunscreen and ready for anything. We drove down Friday night without incident, found the motel, and crashed early.
It was all fine until about 2 a.m. when a couple decided to have a huge screaming fight in our corridor, followed by the people in the room upstairs deciding to dance a few polkas. Or something involving tapshoes. It was hard to tell in the wee dark hours with a pillow over my head and my fingers stuck in my ears.
We arose, bleary-eyed, at 9 a.m. and got ready to go to Universal Studios. Like most of L.A., it’s easily accessible by freeway but charges beaucoup bucks for parking, and is surrounded by shiny buildings and palm trees.
As we strolled the park, I noticed that Ross’s girlfriend, Nichole, was shying away from the costumed characters – a staple of any amusement park – and so I asked her why.
“They kind of freak me out,” she said. It turns out that she’s a bit phobic about people in costumes, even innocuous ones like Bart Simpson and SpongeBob Squarepants.
It turns out that Nichole also gets motion sickness and doesn’t like roller coasters. She went on the rides anyway, but it always made her feel a little ill.
Yet she claimed to love amusement parks: “They’re full of happy people.”
I think if I was in a place where I was afraid of things in it, or they made me sick, I wouldn’t be hanging around too long.
Chelsea, Hunter’s girlfriend, had no such qualms. She liked everything, including the House of Horrors, a walkthrough haunted house which actually was pretty scary.
Chelsea claimed it wasn’t, even though there were costumed creatures jumping out at us with knives and chainsaws.
When we departed at 7 that evening, everyone was tired – me especially – but happy, after a day of shows, rides and general frivolity. Nichole lost her sunglasses on one of the rides, but that was the only casualty of the day.
And me? Tired, broke, but happy that they were all happy. And that’s all that counts.
