Mrs. Safety – Does she wear a cape?

So, just a short while back we adventured with two dear, dear friends Heather and Natalie and their babes down to The Land of Really Bad Bathing Suits and Hideous Sunburns (a.k.a. White Water). It was the first trip in memory for all of our kids.

Heather and I arrived first in full mommy mode. We were ready for a lovely day and had 5 excited kids in tow. We yelled traumatic warnings as the kids tried to dash through the parking lot in their excitement. We followed our loud STOP STOP STOP warnings with eye to eye lessons on the dangers of running in the lot AND not always IMMEDIATELY stopping when they hear our voices. We fed the children a picnic lunch with not a stitch of un-healthy - you know, natural peanut butter, carrots, cheese and the like. We slathered them with enough sunscreen to keep the sun out for a decade, made sure every non-swimmer had a perfectly fitting life jacket and then headed over to the little tikes area.

The water was cold, but the children seemed to be having a blast with the little sprinklers and the four small, age-appropriate slides. There were no tears, all felt safe and secure and there was fun being had all around.

Enter Natalie. If you don't know Natalie, picture boundless sunshine, fun on wheels and reckless abandon. She the type that wet-willies your children, lets her kids have small rodents in the house and actually enjoys camping. As Heather and I are leading the kids out of the little tikes area (to find another little tikes area to shake things up a bit), we meet Natalie who had come to find us. I'm pretty sure she said – what are you all doing over here?? Let's head to the BIG SLIDES!!! At this point, I think my adrenaline rushed just a bit. I've been on the big slides. My children? – Um…no. She suggested the family slide where we all go down in a giant tube together. I thought that sounded nice and kept me within arm's reach of each of my younguns, so we headed off (after another application of sunscreen and a 7-child potty break that lasted roughly a half hour!).

After the family slide went well, Natalie says, Hey Guys! How about we go on the big ones?! You can go down BY YOUR SELF!!! Right then I'm pretty sure I morphed into full-on Mrs. Safety and if I'd had one handy I would have donned my cape. I immediately experienced the horror in my mind of shoving my precious, priceless children down a slippery, dark, terrifying hole BY THEMSELVES. I could already hear the screaming and trauma in my head. I'm nervous, I'm scared, but Natalie leads on. Carson comes up the hill carrying his own tube and grinning ear to ear. Avery wants to go too, so after waiting my turn at the bottom catching all the kids (and seeing that Carson didn't come out upside down), Avery, Richie and I head up to check out the all-open slide. Avery went down by herself and was quite a trooper. Richie and I rode together and all was well. Whew, ok. We can do this.

I was thinking it might be fun to try that again, but no, that wasn't fun enough for Natalie. No, no. We had to step it up even more. It was as if she wasn't going to be satisfied until we had all peed our suits in terror and then we could laugh all the way home about it. She suggests we all attempt the Bermuda Triangle. Passing by the sign, I notice the height requirement. None of mine are tall enough. Nat says, Aw, Come-on…they never check that stuff. Uhh…..ok. Well, I say THIS SLIDE IS A LEVEL FOUR!! The last one was just a three. I'm not so sure about this. At this point, Nat begins teasing me and reading all other warnings on the sign (like the one about being under 300 lbs – Hey Kids, make sure you're not overweight! Ha ha!). Great. Now I'm scared and I'm being mocked. What fun! J There were also no doubles allowed on this ride, so the kids had to go by themselves. They wanted to. But they had no idea what they were getting into.

At Natalie's urging (and mocking), I let them go against my better judgment. Carson loved it. Avery….not so much. She was screaming as she came out of the slide. Rather than give the official Mrs. Safety I Told You So to my friend, I focused my energy on assuring Avery of how proud I was of her being SO SO brave.

Thankfully, the smaller ones were getting restless, so we headed back over for snacks and the little play area. At the end of the day, we tried one more slide. It was the one the put us all over the edge. It was what has infamously been called simply "the white slide" in our house. Since it was a partially open slide, I thought it couldn't be worse than the all-enclosed Bermuda Triangle that the kids did earlier. Perhaps I was wrong. Carson, the daredevil was ready to go! Avery was trembling at the top of the slide and I had to physically place her in the tube and – again, against the code of Mrs. Safety, push her into the dark. I was so concerned that I really didn't have time to mess with Richie who was outright SCREAMING that he didn't want to go down with me. I shoved him into my lap and pushed off as fast as they'd let us.

That slide scared the beee-jeeeebers out of me. Richie and I were both traumatized. He screamed the whole way down and for 30 minutes after. When we got to the bottom, Avery was screaming as well….she had been helped out of her tube by the life guard who evidently asked repeatedly "WHERE IS YOUR MOTHER??" while I was trying to get down to her.

I did learn a few lessons that day:

1. It can be life-giving to have fun friends who push you to do things you might not normally consider.
   
2. When your mom alarm goes off – before shutting things down, consider if this might not be an opportunity for growth.
   
3. When your mom alarm starts screaming blazing blaring – say no.
   
4. When Mrs. Safety goes to the water park she should never, and I repeat NEVER forget her cape!