Stories from the Midway

The thought of running around in the heat with only a Timex and $20 to save me from the sun, $5 bottled water, and spit on the Looping Starship doesn't just leave me cold, it leaves me clammy with nausea.

Ah ... but theme parks at night ... that's a whole other bag. I don't know if y'all do this in Texas, but in Florida we've got this thing called "Grad Night." It's a night where senior high school students from across the south would get on a pimped-out Greyhound and take off to America's world famous happy place. Me going to high school in Miami, the sabor of Grad Night was a little different. While here in Texas, any chaperoned gig was stricter than a home for wayward women -- not so in Florida. Imagine a throng of teenage foreign nationals loaded to the gills with booze, dope, and vitamin A being let loose on the Magic Kingdom, saying things like. "Ay pero Ms. Spin, it's just orange juice, bro! We're already drunk!" You would think that after we were done with DisneyWorld only a plume of smoke and ashes would attest to our having been there, but no. Everyone made it out without getting locked in a bathroom or drowning on a water ride.