Six Flags and the Jar of Trash

They almost looked like a family. Blond locks and surfer shorts, back packs and bracelets. Everyone’s hairs are sun kissed and pool fresh. Together they link arms and hike through the amusement park. Finally! Jenn’s work required one last website update and the hotspot was taking its god damn time. Morgan and Parker whine of boredom as they continue to wait ever so compliantly for the update to progress bar into completion. Morgan’s modeling Jenn’s latest clothing creation. A black tank top with mess cap sleeves and a unicorn high fiving a taco. Its a little big since she’s only about ten years old. Jenn’s got anther design on. A hand pulled screen print with the type ZEROf*CKS in a blue to green gradient. Parker is wearing long sleeves to avoid sunburn. And Danny, its just a damn shame he needs to wear a shirt at all.

The morning started a little slow. Parker is sitting on the living room floor and started grumbling, "I don't think today is going to be as fun as I we think its going to be." 

"Huh? Why do you say that?" Jenn asks, as she watches him moan surrounded by legos. 

"My hand hurts." 

"P Arker Brown, you're just fine, lets get going."  

“Are you done yet, can we go in??” Morgan whines from the back seat.

“Dude. Don’t rush me when I’m trying to get something done it gives me anxiety and makes it take longer.” Jenn lashes back in jest.

“That’s what I always say.” Morgan retorts as she sits back down and returns to the ipad

Jenn crystal eyes Danny on the way back to her laptop and agrees, “Its true she does always say that.” He agrees. 

“Ok Ok ok. I’m done. Lets do this.” Taking a deep pull of wine off the Riesling bottle.

“Jenn, we are in Texas not St. Louis put that down.” Danny says as he packs a jar in his back pack.

Jenn disobeys and crams the bottle into her bag, grabs the the oh shit handle and catapults off the truck seat into the asphalt. As if it were a trampoline she bounces another 3 feet forward and links hands with Morgan. She turns to P Arker Brown and everyone all links up and heads towards a giant yellow and blue roller coaster. Excitedly discussing which ride or slide would come first ,they pilgrimage towards the gate. Yellow heads of hair bobbing in the wind reflect sunshine in virtual rays of positive Ora. Stopping to take photos, walking with her nose in her phone afterwards, Jenn puts a filter on them and posts them to facebook. Tags her friends! 

There’s a sizable line at the gate. Giving enough time for an email to come through requiring yet another website update. Jenn runs back to the parking lot. Since little to zero attention was paid to the location of the vehicle she’s got about zero idea where the car is. Calls Dan up. “Dude, where’s your car. OMG I’m tator tots just coming back.”

“Where are you? Oh I see you...” 

Danny watches Jenn walk with a vengeance back to his arms. They embrace and kiss. “Ewww. Stop kissing my dad!” Morgan exclaims.

They continue through the line and enter the arch way. A short brunette muffin shaped woman is searching back packs. Armed with a stun gun and a sheriff badge this bitch means business. Dan goes in first. Back pack off. The guard reaches in the back and her fingers touch the jar. “Oh let me just throw this away.” He takes the jar from her hand and disappears into the line forming behind us.

Jenn takes one last swig of wine and steps up to plate. She doesn’t get very far. The guard immediately notices the ZEROF*CKS tank top. “You can’t wear that here, we have no profanity policy.”

“Um. well it doesn’t actually say anything wrong.” Still no. “Ok, I’ll just take it off.”

“No, you have to wear a shirt.” Guard not giving any fucks herself.

“Ok. I will wear it inside out.” This prompts the guard sheriff lady to call all the other guard sheriff people and together they all stare with their heads simultaneously tilted side ways to make out the reversed type. The kids are standing there with looks of utter confusion on their faces.

Danny returns from out of nowhere and all four book it back to the car.

Jenn takes the opportunity to ferociously usb hot spot a web update. Saves the file, log on upload. Clear. Lets go back in. Danny disagrees. “Let’s just go to the river.” They children sing a series of no, and pleases, and rollercoasters and sneezes. Jenn sort of completely cosigns with the logic of “What’s the worse that could happen.”

Ok look I’ve got to switch first person for the rest. . . 

Take two, here they go again. Everyone makes it through the first gate. Just as soon as money is exchanged a round brown guard sheriff asks us to come back to the office for a minute. “No. No actually how about we don’t. We have done nothing wrong.” I protest immediately. Things progress quickly. A blur of what the fucks and children crys. At one point I’m in caught between the urge to run after Danny who for some reason ducked under the rope and ran into the crowd again. Then looked at Morgan and Parker being shielded by another guard. This one was a thick tall tan brunette with a super long pony tall. I’d like to pull it and bite her lower lip. The kids are looking at me. And I’m looking at the rope. And know I have to stay. I turn my head and see an even more official officer hand cuffing Danny. Morgan bursts into tears. Parker and I smirk at each as if to say “Well, here we go.”

I head to towards the office. I’m not quiet about my displeasure for the situation. The office is concrete and neatly packed with desks and theme park soldiers in brown stripped uniforms sporting walkie talkies and stun guns. One has a baggie containing a jar. An empty jar. Whether or not that jar contained trash was and is still irrelevant. Danny sticks to the trash story, I explain that they are ruining two children’s day and that they need to just let us walk away so we can go kayaking.

At one point, the one guard guy unscrews the jar and holds it out for the actual sheriff guy to sniff. And boy did he. Stuck his nose right up there and just smelled it.

Then they started talking crazy. Accused us of assault. Said they were arresting him. And wrote me up for being an unruly guest. “Sir your wife needs to leave the office.” I looked at him sitting calmly, arms pinned behind his back. I tucked an unruly hair behind his ear, fixed his sunglasses. “I love you.” I say as I kiss him. Then I stand up and tell the guard, “I ban Six Flags from my life.” as I snatch the pen and sign my name as big as possible. 

“I flew in here from St. Louis, those are not my kids. We have done nothing wrong, We did everything we could to comply to your rules. You need to just let us go.” I continue to stream of conscious my disapproval for the situation. I start heading back to the truck and suddenly 4 guards are hot to trot to find that damn truck. I over heard them looking for it several times on the walkie talkies. Over and over they said looking for a white truck with Californian plates. Dumb asses, we aren't from California. We're just all blond. 

Eventually four guards are marching back to the truck with Morgan, Parker and myself. We sit on the curb and strum up idle conversation as every bag, box and cranny is torn open looking for more jars. 
"The kilo of coke is under the front wheel well." I yell as they continue to shuffle around all of the stuff. There's a lot of stuff, its a work truck. "He climbs cell phone towers." I explain as one guard picks up a tool belt harness with a quizzical look on her face.

They eventually find nothing. Tell me to keep waiting because they might be letting him go. Of course not until after everyone's mother and grandmother had been called. We wait in the shady over hang of the front gate by the ropes. I try to teach the kid sun salutations to pass the time until we see Danny free and walking towards us.