Roller coasters and world-building

another little diddy on dadhood

happiness

First of all, I went to the Bernie rally in LA a few weeks ago and wrote about it for The New Republic, read that thing here.

Anyway, that’s why I didn’t post anything — I was at this rally and then I had to write and then we went to this pool party and then my parents came in for Easter. But I finally caught a breath around Tuesday and on Wednesday, I picked my kid up from preschool and took him to the roller coaster park about fifty minutes from our house.

We’ve been to this roller coaster park several times, by the way. We’re annual members. But it’s only recently that our three-year-old has started going on roller coasters. And of course that wasn’t an easy trick to pull, I had to bribe him with Dippin’ Dots¹ but we got there and, after we got there, he was all-in. You couldn’t keep him off the roller coasters. He was a tiny junky, craving the “tummy tickles.”

It really was the best case scenario. When we were buying this annual pass, I dared to dream: I want the cool kid. I want the kid who just loses his shit at the sight of roller coasters. And here we are.

But the point is that I’ve been trying to develop this, trying to figure out why it’s such a big deal. I don’t really care if my kid is shy about roller coasters, so it’s not that. Rather, it’s just that this is the stage we’re at — I’m in this brief shutter of life where I still get to build his world. Santa and the Easter Bunny (he seems to believe the Easter Bunny is a benevolent dinosaurish creature who, like Santa, lands on top of the house) are still very real. And all this will be gone too soon.

When you talk to old parents, their eyes actually shine when you get them reminiscing about this stage. They’ll trip over themselves to tell you all the funny little idiosyncrasies in the bygone worlds of their own children. The worlds, that, for a shutter of our lives, we also get to occupy. Sure, the Easter Bunny isn’t real. But in this house, in our temporary world, he very much is.

And you want every single good thing in that world, don’t you? You want to infuse it with every possible joy. If the Easter Bunny has to be the size of an airplane, that’s fine. But you want him to be nice. And wear a pink bow. You want roller coasters to give you the “tummy tickles” and jacuzzis (which my son adorably calls “kachuzzis”) to be just a step down from pure magic.

Ultimately, of course, you know it’s useless. This world will collapse, Santa will die and all God’s evils will come to light. Roller coasters will become metal structures explainable with calculus and hell, they’re probably bad for the environment too. The “tummy tickles” will become a simple gravitational phenomenon and kachuzzis will become bacteria pits.

But right now, ever so briefly, they’re all still magic.

I hate to exhume the stoics, but I keep going back to that Epictetus line:

you ought to behave in life as you would at a banquet. As something is being passed around, when it comes to you; stretch out your hand, take a portion of it politely. It passes on; do not detain it.

But the stoics are wrong sometimes. And I’ve never been a good one for moderation. To hell with that take a portion nonsense. I want to spend as much time in his brief little magical world as I can.

So we go to the roller coasters every week. And we go on hikes every week and the zoo where we spend half-an-hour talking at the ostrich. It’s a rottenly clichéd analogy, but I feel like all these moments — be they roller coasters or easter bunnies or his joy at his favorite book before bed — are grains of sand and I can only hold them in my hand for so long before they start falling away.

1. also, it’s totally ironic how Dippin’ Dots were formerly the Ice Cream of the Future™ but said future never panned out and now Dippin’ Dots are only a disappointing, chemically-tasting treat of the hellscape everyday.