Chasing Kids Drives
Him Bonkers
I’m assuming this because we took our kids to the Bonkers in Peabody when I was on vacation recently. It was during this visit that we decided 2-year-old Tim was ready for the maze, filled with wacky tubes, ladders and slides, given that he’s the type of kid who enjoys physical activity. Unfortunately for us, it turns out he’s also the type of kid who enjoys throwing himself into any random opening that happens to present itself.
It’s my fault, though, for following him into the maze in the first place. The structure is clearly designed to keep kids safe, since most parents take a Bonkers visit as an opportunity to sit and yak. Meanwhile, their kids careen through the thing like sugar-rushed Lost Boys, only to pop out the other end perfectly healthy, or at least only slightly dented.
But I must be overprotective, or stupid, because I insisted on following him through the thing. That’s when I discovered there’s nothing quite like the panic you feel when one of your young progeny throws himself head first down a three-story corkscrew slide, and you have no idea where he might end up — for all I knew it let out somewhere on the Lynnway.
Of course I was forced to follow suit, and as I wound my way down, my mind reeled: What if I can’t fit all the way through? What if I land on a pile of children, crushing them with my prodigious girth? What if the slide leads to a secret basement room where they turn us all into donkeys?
As for Tim, though, turns out I needn’t have worried. As soon as I hit bottom I caught sight of his little diaper-padded tush as he zipped up the undersized spiral staircase, which I then shoved myself into in pursuit. Meanwhile the other children stared at me, clearly wondering why I wasn’t doing something that grown-ups do to have fun, like my taxes or driving aggressively.
But the slides and stairways are nothing compared to the tubes. At one point while crawling after Tim, the tube I was in veered inexplicably upward; I saw my hands clawing their way to the precious daylight on the other end, but I wasn’t going anywhere. Momentarily, a vision of the next day’s Peabody fire log flashed through my head: “Bonkers Fun House, fat man stuck in tube; Jaws of Life needed.”
(Interestingly, I distinctly remember looking down through the joint in the tube and seeing an entire table of yakking parents. I wondered what would happen if it gave way and I fell onto their table; I decided I would think it was pretty funny as I was carted off to the hospital for my full body cast.)
Luckily as Tim turned the corner ahead I was able to summon a burst of strength and propel myself forward, not unlike a trained seal jumping out of his tank in search of carp. This seemed to impress the logjam of kids that had built up behind me, who I think were considering starting a small bonfire under my tuchus.
Fortunately, after several hours of this — during which I sweat through my rugby shirt, mentally kicking myself for not wearing a spandex body suit and knee pads — we all came out in one piece, and finished the day with pizza that tasted entirely too good to have come from a place called Bonkers Fun House Pizza. My knees may never be the same, but the rest of me was glad to see my kids so happy.
Probably not as happy as that guy on the yacht, though.