My family calls it "The Swinging Dragon Incident."
My mother, feeling that this does not do justice to the sheer terror that we experienced on this day, interjects, "Oh, do you mean the time little Elizabeth nearly plummeted to her death on the damn dragon?"
It began harmlessly enough with a family trip to a certain Southern California theme park. Unfortunately, it was not Disneyland. Disneyland understands the importance of things like minding their own height requirement charts and not murdering children inside the park.
Not-Disneyland was still struggling with their comprehension of these concepts. Luckily, there were some other policies they held firm on, such as not picking up the trash around the park more than biannually and performing maintenance on all rides simultaneously, instead of at well-timed intervals. Due to their strict enforcement of the latter, my family struggled to find rides that were both suitable for my tiny frame and not completely dismantled.
We finally came across a giant, happily-painted dragon swaying gently in the wind that seemed to meet both of the aforementioned criteria. I excitedly darted towards the height requirement chart, but upon my arrival the bold, red line towering more than a foot overhead promptly crushed my little four-year-old soul. Defeated, I began to walk away, having decided that I shall spend the remainder of the day educating my parents on vacation planning.
Then it happened. A voice called to me. It sounded just like choirs of angels interspersed with the clinking of unicorn horns in a field of marshmallow fluff. "It's okay. She'll be just fine, folks," the young, female ride attendant beckoned.
Suspicious, my parents further questioned the ride attendant of this dragon's intent. Would it simply sway gently in the wind a few times before delivering us back to earth relatively unscathed? No, it would not. But my parents would not have time to learn the answers to their completely legitimate questions.
I had already mounted the dragon.
Still slightly wary, my parents joined me, flanking me on each side of the bench I had chosen. I was initially rather annoyed by their seating selection. We were the only people on the ride, so I didn't see why we couldn't all have our own bench seats. Minutes later, their seating selection would prove instrumental to my survival.
The dragon began to move. As promised, it seemed to rock gently in a manner that would not be terrifying for a four-year-old such as myself. It quickly became clear though that these initial movements were only to gain momentum for what was to come.
As the swaying of the dragon became increasingly exaggerated, I recall my parents screaming at the ride attendant to stop the ride. Visibly distraught and now having recognized her actions to have been in error, she hollered back that she couldn't.
Before long, we were at a ninety degree angle, staring down at the asphalt below. My mother was clutching her purse, the contents of which were spilling everywhere. My father, feeling that death was imminent at this moment, appeared to be contemplating just jumping to get it over with. In all the chaos, my parents failed to notice that I was slowly scooting to my death. The safety bar, having been designed for those who met the actual height requirement for this ride, was failing to keep me in place. With each swing, I had to wrap both arms tightly around the bar, but my pathetic little arms were becoming exhausted and the likelihood of survival was seeming grim.
Finally, my mother noticed that I was being flung about violently and relinquished her grip on her purse to hold me securely in place. She was yelling at my father to assist, but he was curled up against the side of the ride and apparently had lapsed into some sort of trauma-induced trance. I'm pretty sure he was under the impression that we had all already died. This went on until the ride finally slowed and we were all able to exit. The ride attendant cowered as we passed through the exit, saved from verbal assault only by my father's urgent need to vomit.
The fear had dissipated by the time we arrived back in Arizona, but now manifested in the form of anger. It was then that I resolved to inform the world of this evil dragon. Each time a new person was encountered, I politely introduced myself, then launched into a vivid description of my near-death experience.
Restaurants were perhaps my favorite place to wage my anti-dragon campaign.
I carried a small notebook and crayon with me at all times so that I could render illustrations of the events, then hand them out to anyone who would take them. Sadly, I do not have any of my original drawings to share, but I imagine they looked something like this:
Admittedly, this may have been an exaggeration. But I didn't care...I was saving lives. This probably would have been a more accurate portrayal:
At first, my parents supported my campaign. They agreed that people needed to know. I had always been a quiet child, so they were probably happy to see that I had become so fearlessly outgoing.
In time though, it became clear that I was obsessed. Not only was I interfering with the breakfasts of strangers to tell them my tale, I was submitting drawings of the incident to God during the weekly offering collection at church and demolishing other people's copies of the movie Pete's Dragon. People were becoming annoyed, especially since I began to take some creative liberties with the story.
In time, my enthusiasm for saving people from certain death via dragon attack waned.
Or did it? After all, I did just recount my story to anyone on the Internet who will listen, complete with dramatic illustrations depicting the event. How's that for a twist, M. Night Shyamalan?
Anyway, there's really only one thing you need to do to aid in saving the world from dragons:
Step 1: Do not ride the swinging dragon at Knott's Berry Farm.
Tip: Similar rides at other amusement parks should be considered equally dangerous and are best avoided.
Excellent blog and relevant at that. Top google searchs of 2010... why are Americans afraid of dragons? Liz, you really are doing the world a favor here :).
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