My girlfriend loves rollercoasters. I don’t. I don’t mind them, but I have both a limited appetite and capacity for going sideways at 100 kilometers an hour. Sooner or later, I will tap out.
Naturally, on our first theme park date, we saved the one with the looping for last. We had just shared a portion of salmon tagliatelle, and I was about to make a two-hour drive to get us home. Needless to say, at this point, riding another rollercoaster, especially one I’d never ridden before, wasn’t the first thing on my list. But we got a quick-access slot via the park’s app, and so we went.
When I stepped up to the gate, I wasn’t terrified but definitely nervous. Then, I saw them: kids. There was one more group going ahead of us, and the first three rows of two were all taken by humans no older than twelve. The youngest was probably six—and in the very front row, of course.
While we were quickly stuffing our sunglasses and wallets and could-fall-off items of all kinds into our bag, they were sitting there, wearing their glasses, using their phones, chatting with each other as if they were hanging out in a café overlooking the Seine instead of dangling in a plastic seat about to accelerate violently to highway speed in the next 25 seconds. “Damn!” I thought. “These kids are fearless!”
Caught between “How inspiring!” and “If these little gremlins can do it, so can I!” I remembered: Actually, most kids are fearless, and, once upon a time, so was I. It was easy to get on after that, and, as it turned out, that rollercoaster wasn’t so bad. In fact, it was less intense than the one we had ridden earlier in the day, which I knew from way back when and remembered as being “pretty chill,” but that’s a story for another day.
As long as there are kids sitting in the front row, the train is headed in the right direction—and it’s not too late for you to reawaken your inner pioneer.