Young, drunk and been dared
is a good way to get seriously hurt.

I worked in an amusement park when I was in high school, back in the days when the drinking age was 18. So one night some of my co-workers and I were out drinking and someone came up with the idea of climbing into the park. As it was past 1:00 am and we were all a bit loopy, we all agreed that this sounded great- so we went with our respective girlfriends and climbed over the chain link fence.

Then someone had the idea to go down the Sky Slide.

You know those big-ass slides where you have to sit in a sack and you go whizzing down a little channel and end up at the bottom skidding to a halt on a carpet covered deck just before you hit the railing around said deck? Yeah. One of those.

We get our sacks and start climbing. One guy reaches over and says, "Hey! The slide's wet from the dew! We can't slide on this!"

"Sure we can!" pipes up the future mechanical engineer. "These sacks have a plastic coating on the top side. Flip them upside down and we'll hydroplane!"

We get to the top and I show them what I meant with the sacks, and we all get into our respective little channels. "Right, here I go!" yelled one of my companions, and shoved off. I saw him hit the first drop off and get airborne, and felt the adrenaline rush. "Hell yeah!" I followed him with a huge grin on my face.

Had I waited a second longer, I never would have done it, as I would have heard him hit.

I hit the big drop off and found myself several inches above the track. The slide then came up to slap against me hard as I reached the bottom, about crushed me as I whipped up along the next rise, then dropped away from me as I flew through the air above the landing area. I hit the wooden railing and lay moaning next to the other guy for a brief instant- until we heard the sounds of the other guys coming and rolled out of the way just in time.

Cue three more drunken twats pulling a Wiley Coyote into the railing.

None of us were seriously injured, but we all limped a bit for the next couple of days...
( The Resident Loon Not a demographic. Do not measure., Thu 20 Dec 2007, 17:38, Reply)