I used to really enjoy roller coasters, back before my life became one. But two years of ups and downs, mostly downs, has taken a toll. It isn't even frightening anymore, only tedious.
Back when I was in high school, I got a job at Disneyland. It wasn't my first. When I was 16 I was a toy soldier in the Christmas parade, marching twice a day down Main Street U.S.A. in 50 pounds of fiberglass. I had wanted to be a ride operator, but was banished to merchandise. I didn't much mind because any job at "The Park" was highly coveted and hard to get. It wasn't so much the cachet of working at the "Happiest Place on Earth", although there was that. It wasn't just the perks, like being to sign people in for free, a god-like power in the eyes of out-of-state relatives. It was the fact that back then Disneyland was union and paid union wages. A lowly food worker could easily make twice what McDonalds paid. And the princely ride operators were Teamsters and made as much as a school teacher just for punching a few buttons in a pirate costume. My mother found this neither amusing nor fair since she was a teacher.
At the time I started they were just finishing construction on the third Disney mountain, Big Thunder Mountain Railroad. A notice appeared in the break room:
VOLUNTEERS NEEDED TO TEST BIG THUNDER.
How cool was that? Of course you wouldn't be paid for it - it was Disney after all. But the thought of being one of the first to ride the new coaster and be able to boast about it to anyone who cared (which ended up being about zero people) was too good to pass up.
I signed up.
There were already urban legends floating around about the new ride, about the early train full of executives that derailed sending everyone to the hospital. About the manager who accidentally dropped his ring of keys on the tracks at the load platform. The powerful electromagnets that moved the trains through the station shot them like a cannonball through all the fake rockwork and out into the river, almost decapitating an engineer in the process.
Allegedly.
So on the anointed day I arrived bright and early. I was shown my seat, near the back of the train. I would be sharing it with 40 pound bags of sand. Once we were all settled in and given a safety spiel we were dispatched for our first trip.
It was tamer than I had imagined or hoped, but it was fun nonetheless. We whooshed back into the station to whoops and whistles. The engineers huddled around the control panel while the managers all fiddled around with clip boards murmuring to each other. After a couple of minutes they turned to us guinea pigs and announced it was time to go again.
And again.
And again.
And again.
We rode it 8 or 10 times in the first hour. The thrill was gone. Unfortunately we had all signed up for an eight hour shift and there was no backing out. Soon we were returning to the station in bored silence. My fellow testers started trying to nap on the ride.
When we returned from a break we were informed we would now be testing the brakes. In order to run multiple trains at the same time, they needed to be able to stop them at any point in the ride. Now we wouldn't even be getting full rides. Thirty seconds into the trip they'd slam on the brakes, usually on a steeply banked turn. You'd slump against the side of the train at a 45 degree angle and then be crushed by 200 pounds of sand. And there they'd leave you for 15 or 20 minutes while they inspected the system. Finally someone would appear to release you and walk you back to the station. And the process began again. I don't even know why they needed us. It all seemed rather pointless.
I've flash-backed to that experience a lot over the past couple of days. The up and down events of the past week don't even seem to phase us anymore. Just when we seem to be gaining some momentum in our lives, when we think that we're finally on our way out of here, on slam the brakes and we're crushed under our own expectations.
Time to walk back to the station and try it again.
It still all seems rather pointless.
