443: Amusement Park
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From the B, B, C, chicago is this american life and our class. Okay, so we're going to the get here into the park.

We're going, this is our morning, this the morning lock into the park. Everybody will split up into their different sections and get the part open. We'll start put out Prices.

And red amusement park in kinda city, missouri called worlds of fun. We're going to be spending the entire hour today at amusement parks. It's five minutes before opening and walking with coal liner's, who's twenty five with permanently must hear in the cheerful five with the buzz buddies era tomb hangs he's becoming to this park since was a little kid, started working here as a summer job at fourteen and then basically just never love IT began his real jobs seven years later. He is a full time, year round employee.

I love a musing parts. Anytime my family will go on vacation, we scheduled ted around an amusement park because I love roll costs, because I love the muse parks. I mean, i've walked this pathway that we're taking right now. I've walked IT thousands and thousands and thousands of times when he was little.

His family had season passes here, and they would come a lot. He traveled any new role coster to try IT out daydreamed about a job where he would design parks and build roller costers. And when his dad drove here, the age of fourteen am for a job in a you, you were a suit. That interview just sitting inside the park's officers regio tilt arian picture, the principles office at a public high school. Even that was exciting.

I rumor being like, kind of like, oh, wow, this is the inner side of, you know, this is the first watching, this is where all the cool stuff happens. And then, you know, the first time actually getting in the uniform, actually working in the part, I mean, I remember red to me. I was like, this is, this is kind of a really, you know, i'm actually working in an amusement park now and to me, that was kind of like, awesome. You know that awesome. So excited about this.

I may think that enthusiasm would diminish over time, but it's incredible about coal is that even after a decade here, even after becoming an adult in working sixty, seventy hour weeks every week, all summer, even with the pressure in his current job of running a whole apartment and heading financial targets and buying all the surprise and hiring and supervising over one hundred Young people, he is still pretty cycled about working in amusement park.

And IT is not a glimmer job. The department code runs is the games department at roads of fun. This is thirty two games, kind of you would see at any carnival or midway.

We can know three soft balls tried to threw them into a milk can, or you throw being bags and targets are you shoot darts to knock over stack cups. Nobody comes to an amusement park with the games, call himself, and never went to an an amusement park with the games. But he's an extrovert, and he has filled the department with extroverts like malloy. The park is barely open hargate any customers here at all when called stop by your gams morning rounds.

A malloy loves talking on the mike. Malloy does a good about the mike. Thank you.

I appreciated. Like, what's here. So go for a try to get people .

of play already, whatever. Here are two, three point chAllenge today. Looking far, our first winter.

You come on over here. You have forty second on the clock. Well, just up, and you can be walking away with some eyes and practice.

This is exactly how cool trains kids to talk on the mike. Don't stop. Get a flow.

Have fun if you have fun. That's that's onna. Sell the game watching coal, run the games department. Worlds of fun is watching somebody who was raised here and who completely thorough mastered everything. It's ready to witness somebody so happily grated any job.

right? Let's go around, guys. There still people are.

but it's the first shift meeting of the day. About thirty teenagers and college kids, million, a big tree before the ship.

Our guys, listen up. Get around. Let's do this.

Here we go. 需 quiet。 Please show quick row.

quick. Here we go. Today is saturday. Today is busy day.

Today is the day that we have a very good day because we're onna be a lot of people playing games. And today, of course, is one of my favorite days. The season is the second round of the sweet tournament. Let's take a toll hier o we've one of the guys .

sam holds up a poster board with torna bracket on IT like grand sports tournament, the sound sixteen tournaments, the kids in all thirty two games in the park against each other and players, and four we competition to make the most money. Last week, half the games were regimented cause here letting the remaining games know who they're .

competing with today pigs of furber pen versus goblet tos line now, now. We have you further. Could this possibly be a precursor for today? Yesterday, the number one game in the park was scale africa.

Okay, scale africa is the scale a game where I guess your waiter age and it's in the africa part of the park, hts scale africa, and it's not surprised that is number one, IT always makes sense of money. All the games in the park are group together into four different teams, which they call games one, games two, games three and games four. And these four teams, games one, three, four, compete inst each other all summer long.

Like teams at summer camp in a three month long color war. Most of their amusement parks don't go this far to make things interesting for the workers. This park worlds of fun is own by a company called seder fair, that on eleven amusement parks and six water parks and called, knows the guys who on the game department at the other parks, and some of them do competitions like this between the employees.

But I don't think they do IT to the extent of what we do. I mean, we every year I talk about, you know, we had the death match tournament. We had the sweet sixteen tournament couple years ago, we did a thing called toss the boss.

And basically what happened was, is that every single day I pull a game out of hat, and if that game was the number one game in the park for that day, then that section would get to throw me in the pond. If the pound is not a good looking on, its gross and know there is smells. And the deal was, is that if you are the number one giving the park, you get to thrown me in the pond.

It's finally one day, the game that he picked from the hat that day try the hardest and actually became the number one game of the part of the day.

Two, three.

Of course, they made a video about this because, you know, the present day amErica and go went, told his peers as colleagues, the guys who run the game department at the other parts, all about what I go.

And I tell them apart of others, and I showed a picture, you know, I go, there's me, so can wit. And I mean, I kind of got laughed. You know, like, why would you ever do that? And to me and my mind knows, just like, why would you not do that? You know, why would you not want to get people excited about working in the game that they at least they may try, they may do a little bit more. And if I can get a little bit more out of them, we're good even if the game only makes a little bit more money.

Also.

it's more fun for the kids. exactly. It's all about more fun. alright. So there's a lot of people in the party now.

I have composed a song about today, which I now want to sing for you, and you can also sing along. okay? Saturday is saturday, sunday, saturday, saturday.

对， what is I got? I 吓 着 这 ok。 Today, I don't feel like writing in the ride.

I just want to play all the games. I really like playing in mobile. Win a giant top frog, a big basketball. Yesterday, I don't feel like just play in games. Hi, let's have a big guys, everybody, and I give the three, one, two, three.

Today on our radio show, we get to amusing parks all over the country. We see stuff back. States we had no idea was going on like that song.

We are JoNathan gold stein story about moving to the jersey shore for a summer when he was sixteen. And we hear your stories. We asked you to call him with your amusement park stories, and you told some great ones today.

Suffers ran a few years ago, but we're erring IT again now because it's summer, it's holiday weekend. It's hot, good, spend an hour, the fun test place possible that ride the ride. It's gorda or terrible. Great food together for this hour. Kill the rock coaster sound now.

Stay with us.

That game boy grows up following cold in burg around in his early running tour of words of fun park. I'm going a couple things. First of all, people play the games because they want to win the prizes. And so an important part of his job is actually guessing what prizes are going to excite people.

He kind of just go, IT is what IT is. Oh, I got sure you a limor, you're onna. See what a limor is.

Yeah, people love this. This is a lamer. People play for this all the time. This is one of our Normal Prices.

really. Yeah, good to fight. It's a four recent colored monkey the size of a teddy bear with huge eyes and a super long tail. When they put IT into the dark game, the dark game became the most popular games in the park, doubled its business. I ask to learn the coal invents games.

You like angry birds, right?

We ran a corner, and I see why. He asked.

What we're looking at right now is a giant sling shot with with a launch, cher that you launch, uh, basically bean bags at pigs. And we we built this.

You got permission from the angry birds people.

Well.

this turns out to be kind of an awkward question. Call point said that this sling shot game is a not actually called angry birds.

It's called pigs of fury, pigs of fury. So now this is one of our number one games. It's people love shooting giant slinger.

Before I ve go out to cancer sitting to me call, I watched his youtube videos online. Yes, he has youtube videos, and I hardly recommend them. They are shot, directed and staring coal.

They are low tech, their go budget. In this one, he was a viking helmet and fake mustache and wire room glasses. And he's walking through a video ark.

Those are his eche footstep s that you're hearing next days inside, will looks like, you know, this old M R. Ade machines with the mechanical call that picks up Prices. This one is big enough for a person to stand inside. And coal is incited, surrounded by huge staff, ed animals.

And he wraps.

OK, i'm going to stop the video right there when he says a bear, a dog and a giant monkey, then we have three quick shots of stuff, animal Prices, a bear, a dog and a giant monkey.

Sometimes people just go like.

As the video continues, the teenagers on his staff joined him and they're dancing around and there's pitting waco moles. And everything that they do in this video is so deeply uncool that you know, that they must really like and trust each other and their total commitment to what they are doing actually flips the dorgan is and makes a kind of cool.

There are over a dozen videos are set up in the amusement park, with the stuff t animal Prices always playing surprisingly central roles, like the size I special effects movie they made wearing mysterious s ray from outer space hits and the stuff ed animal prizes are come to life seeking vengeance. Key line.

the Prices attacked me. I was in my game, the earth ship. And next thing and you has been puled .

by fares seme. Normal video, or the bunch is a training video. This one opens on call. He's in a suit tie in front of a book. Reading a book, he looks up, started out as if the camera surprised him.

Hello, how are you just reading? Welcome to the word's fun games training video. My name is coal. I'll be taking you on this wonderful Jerry here when he says.

wonderful journey heat bugs at the camera with this gesture that communicates the idea. I know this is completely ridiculous. In fact, the entire video seems to be making fun of the idea of training videos, while at the same time, IT is a training video explaining how to sign in, how to use the title card, how to stock prizes. I saw these videos, and all I could think of was these people really love their jobs. And I thought about Michael skat, the fictional boss on the office.

I'd say that there's a lot of Michael Scott in this job. I say there's a lot of Michael Scott in me. Probably I do silly things that everybody looks at me later ago.

Why did he do that? Why did? Why was a deep necessary for called a dress up, wearing a big beard and a raincoat, and tell everyone he lived downtown under the bridge and he was there, a motivational speaker today, everybody on field bridges, you know, like go out talking about what went through his thought process.

And i've run out with a score gun all the time. I got my big super soccer. And on busy days, i'll take the super soccer and i'll fill IT up with the ice water and i'll sneak around the corner just and they're all stand there and i'll just go light them up just so I spray across the whole group.

You know, that's what makes IT fun. They're gona remember fill bridges more than you know like anything else throughout the day. And so if they're talking about did you guys see what called IT at the shift mean? Even if they say that was stupid or that was not funny, they're still going to be talking about IT and that still going to get them happy about this job.

So does that work in practice? After all, if you think about IT amusement park jobs are not on their face. Very fun, you know, taking tickets, strapping people in the rides, convincing passage by to throw three balls into a camp.

Well, the saturday that have visited turned out to be one of the busiest, hottest days of the summer. IT was the concert at the park, which brought in thousands of extra people. And of course, this was sweet sixteen, round two, which did seem to matter to the kids before the shift helly. And a couple of the other kids from games three pulled call aside and crowded close. The kids and other .

teams couldn't see. So this is, you have a secret weapon. That is that going to show secret pon? I know IT is in .

a study.

so is that you made .

the time .

I made the because we have a game with the name. Is that in sweet sixteen? You know, something running around in this costume to try to sell. It's kind of big and it's kind of pattern, did you.

Just go abril.

No, I ve had this fabric, so the head hold arms hole and it's gonna look like the is in instead.

like that is more than exciting.

People are going to stop in taking pictures. So maybe win one two.

Meanwhile, guys in games four, we're doing great in sweet sixteen, all the games have survived the first round. Games one was eliminated completely in the first round of sweet sixteen as their games two magazine oxon are playing a double shift. Help me to break the record for how much has ever been made ever in their two games. There are not so secret strategy.

right? So strobe light, straw blight. You want two black lights out there.

Max and his team, dominic, or setting up at a game called a roll above which one of the older games in the park, basically it's just ski ball. But as you get points that moves a little wooden pig, which is in a race with all the other writers, this is make any sense, actually doesn't matter. Who would you need to know? Games two is hoping to turn this quickly.

Sixteen year old game roll ball, which never dos well into a crazy dance party. They called technobabble max and dominic had brought in a disco ball. They brought in later years. And dominic is explaining to max how he wants to set IT all up.

Yeah, we're going to put a light on that toy chest, going to put a to a light on that box are shining at the disco ball. Disco is going to be moving. It's all dark in here. People wants to walk on a little big one of my step. And on woo, have an hour before .

the park open. Haley and clare, I gotten work early, and we're down in games three. By scale africa.

we wanted to set up the most Prices that we could make. The piles extravagant, a lot of like, and that takes a lot of type. So we came out here early.

so just describe but looking at this appear .

made here of turtles and their spandau lions, there's going to be one of tigers .

is going to each permit has over a hundred stuff t animals in IT, which is bigger than I think you're probably imagining IT. It's like nearly waste high. And so there are four big pastel covered piles of push toys right in the middle walkway, looking so, so easy to win. Basically.

every we got, yeah, we're doing about here. Go and bigger. Go home.

We really want away. We brought in streaming ers balloons, energy drinks. We got a whole entry energy drinks.

We got a hoenir gator ID. We brought in food for everyone, energize, get pumped up for the whole day. We really wana win. We lost death match and very painful that all.

Years ago I was lead of games three. This was my section code.

gets just as excited as the kids do when talking about all the fun things that he did back when he was hilly, and clears age working here running games three, like this team with dresses. Pirates for the guessing game.

And they be out of the scale they do guessing. Pirates, gr, your agb. Gr, you know, stuff like that.

Two thousand and four. Cameron, we dominated. We'd beat everyone. IT was awesome, and I saw him.

IT is still so alive for him. They dominated in two thousand and four by tricking out one of the games with music and kinds of como and turning into a party, doubling its take for .

the day we brought my fog machine from home because of the time I was in high school, and head a band. And people flocked to IT. And we destroyed games to we destroyed on that year.

He was happy as IBM in two thousand and three, we gotten so close to winning. And I just kept on saying, two thousand four, the year games three were bringing the sweet sixteen back two thousand four, and we did. We won, and I was really happy.

Late morning, when I chuck back at games three, the pms of plush toys was pretty much exactly as big as I had earlier that morning. Things we're slow and accuse the business. One of the supervisors, Sarah, was standing on the roof of this little heart.

eighty eight more gasses until i'm coming off the room. She's staying on the roof. And so he gets a hundred glasses.

I'm here until I get eight, eight more gasses. And then i'm going allow myself to take a bathroom break. So and if you guys walk back, if you guys wanted complain, my game helpme out.

Give me off. This room is only five dollars to play. I can guess your age, weight, or brita month.

This is a technique that I recognized from a thousand public radio pledge drives. And he was working about as slowly for her as IT works for us. Strangers just don't care if some girl on the roof gets to take .

a bathroom break I like and so I can get more people to play. IT is serious and all you people don't want to help me out. thanks. Picks, picks for the luck you should come idea you guys to can feel these turtles IT sounds like a weird, a weird thing that we really have the softish turtles in town. You should feel one, they're really soft after a while.

serious switch technique and finally managed to rule of a crop through the simple text of making a series of insanely terrible gashes. First, there is a dad who looks like he's forty two, and in fact is forty two. Sarah guest, just twenty five OK than a grandmother who was standing there with kids and grandkids. Sarah write to us with this woman age or a Whiteboard.

This could be really wrong. I get the feeling is really wrong, but that's okay. We'll see guys like this. Guess maybe all right, try. And how are you fifty?

I guess .

you're thirty seven. It's sunglasses. Sunglasses really thrown me off like, congratulations to be got any party.

Once later, there are privately confirmed from me that he did intentionally take a dive, which is fine with coal, because IT turns out IT doesn't matter if the kids gets right. The game cost five dollars to play. The Prices costs less than five dollars, so I can be wrong with every single guess.

Don't magnified profit. In fact, it's good to lose because people Carrying prizes around the park are a walking advertisement for all the games calls. Journey from summer time employee e like Sarah to full time year round boss happened in a couple of steps. He said, there's a kind of nerdy kid in high school in a small town. IT was nice to come to a place where his personality was rewarded.

I couldn't wait till the summer because when he was summer time, I get to come the world fun and work with people that are just like me and enjoy our whole summer together.

Years of that. In his senior year, the university can as alliance. He got a phone call offering me the job of games manager and dropped out of school to take IT.

It's it's probably with the hardest decisions i've read to make. But I said, okay, this opportunity is probably lying and to come along once in a lifetime.

as you imagine, and has n't been such a public or decision with family.

So I mean, I have a full year left. I'm like one full year of college left. IT comes up when you least expected.

IT comes up when they like, oh, I know you're work in real harbor when you get back to school or my grandmother. Now before you know I pass on, you need to make sure you complete to cut in my grandma all the time. And I get a lot from the girlfriend too. When are you going to finish? Because he just graduated college.

This girlfriend and color pretty serious. They just moved in together. They made in games back in two thousand and six, though he moved on from games.

I get that all the time. You're like, we're not going to be together forever. If you don't finish college, I get IT a lot.

How often will come up?

Want a week, maybe maybe once every two weeks spelling on the week? I don't know.

I don't know. Got a very accomplish.

People don't have .

college degrees.

Steve jobs, Steve jobs, he changed the world. You know, i'm just a lowly little games manager, a small midsized park in kids city. Who wants to buy some games?

By midday down the games three, that is dusty, who's wearing the four body ban anosike that helly hand made for him, which looks amazing. But IT is ninety four degrees, which is sapping everybody's energy. And business is slow.

All right, you guys have a great day.

So is the day where's on? People slowly migrate from the rides to the games. And by nightfall, when IT cools off, guys in games to finally get technology working.

Max and oxon, a covered from head to toe in glow lights, go around a corner together, and we see them in the distance. And there's a crowd of three dozen people rounding the game. It's fantastic.

Oh, my godness. Let's go look at technobabble at this。

No, it's six of your staff .

and and two, three other guys all dancing in a big circle. All the guys all circle to techno music.

And how many people are actually playing? zero.

A dominic, a dominant.

That's dominic, the team leader here at games .

to all look dom's all I can mbaru. Hi don. How many people play the game?

Tom, I, I, yeah. Why are we turning that into me? Just maybe they .

should dance inside the game instead of on the walkway in front of the game, so people would be pulled into play. Damn does not want to do this. And listen, what a good boco is his firm, but is very .

nice about IT. You're so close. You're so close. He did, but then you didn't have anybody out here talking to them saying, hey, where you playing the game that they would realize that you know they're not going to realize that you know that you and Better than anyone, you should know that they're not going to just like, oh. Yet IT looks fine. I meet all the lights saying it's, i'm not gonna deny the awesome ess, but I am going to say that no more death parties. I really think the death parties are not going to help you with.

I walked down to check on games three IT is ten thirty at night. Clair has been here for thirteen hours since I saw her setting up period ms. Of push before the gates opened to the park.

Those parameters without raggy piles, maybe half the original size, which means that they did great. They got lots of people to play. They would probably give away five hundred prizes for wrong glasses and clear. Is that exactly the kind of day that call once for all the kids? Did you have fun today?

Yes, I do lot of fun. I I had no idea what time IT wasn't til about twenty minutes go when I checked IT just didn't occur to me that I needed to check the .

time because there was going by so fast. Yeah, when did you take your first .

break today? I haven't .

taken a break. Well.

yeah, yeah, i'm going to, you do IT. This is first third year.

Here is eighteen going to misery state in the forest state nursing. And SHE tells me what a lot of kids here tell me you wouldn't keep coming back to work with words of fun. If not a cal.

definitely not. I don't think any other boss would do like the rally days, the death match and sweet sixteen, the toss, the bus, just all the fun steps that we do that keeps us going through the season and just keeps this job exciting everyday.

Sam, one of the few games for has been there for three summer. And the author says the call is the reason that he keeps coming back.

Honestly, no one else could do a Better job. He was made to do this.

It's funny, like watching him do something like singing a goofy song for you guys in the morning. You can imagine high school students and college students are rolling their eyes at somebody doing that, but nobody does.

No, it's weird. It's it's almost like that's that's the thing to do. Whatever code does is the thing to be doing at that moment. And we just, we just shall feel like that was the right move.

Do you remember what was like the first time you saw one of his videos?

I do, I remember seeing and I was like, that's my boss and he just made that video. And I was so cool because I went in visuals from my friends that are like, like, who's this guy is? Like, that's my boss. And so weird, because a lot of people would say was an amusement park. You know, you're great at working at an amusement park.

IT doesn't mean, by the way, that he has seen by his bosses and some kind super star, you get respect, sure they are pretty like them. Is the immediate boss, matt, thing that there is nobody Better at games in any of the eleven amusement parts known by their parent company is see to fair. But IT was working one of the small lest to the eleven part.

So other games managers are bigger part spring and way more money than code does. And games, in the grand scheme of things, is actually the smallest revenue producer at most amusement parks. The biggest money to musement park comes from ticket sales and news.

Food at buddy buys food, then merge and then bringing up the rear his games. What codas has less effect on the company's bottle mine and lots of people in the company, and as much just call loves this job. You came up but wonder, how long can a person do this job?

So the one thing that I always say, I mean, i'm twenty five now, I started here enough for teen. And the weird thing is, instead i'm getting older, but everybody else in the department staying the same age.

I don't want to set t the tape out there. Yes, I know mathematic hay day is confused calls in the film to. But but the thing the thing i'm wondering for you is to do, do you feel like somehow accidently in this job you get stuck in high school, you you got stuck at fifteen, like there's a part of you where you're still back there.

I like working on the park with the kids. Absolutely one hundred percent. The goofball part, the goofy ball part.

the part where you get to act their age instead of your age.

yes. Does that make me sound that I am i'm still a manager. I'm still overseeing a hundred people that work for me, you know.

But at the same time, ten years from now, I mean, I don't think I can still be a group. Well, I think that just kind get creepy. I mean, you're thirty five when you work with to watch your high scholars in a gate.

Is that creepy? maybe? Maybe not. I don't know.

Do you worry that you'll never be happier in any job that you .

are in this one? Yes, absolutely.

That's a weird to know that you're in the best job you may ever have at twenty five, especially when is a job that you know in your heart can last.

okay. So we've just broke the story back in twenty eleven. Call is now solidly in his thirties. He is thirty eight years old, left his job at worlds of fun years ago, work for a while, and sales and toy company gave some motivation, talks about being a boss on an amusement park. These days, he trained sales people that detect company where he sometimes place the guitar at work in business meetings. Also, these are dad, when you go off, where you go off, he's so crazy about amusement parks.

Takes his wife to write rower costers when the going vacation, and he actually helped set up in a umi association for his old staff at the games s department that words, a fun work that deal with the amusement park to allow old games kids to go back to the park and work a shift in games. Relive the gory. I just had a staff for union two weeks ago while coming up carony split in the air.

Scary things happen on rides and bold step forward for paint power targets everywhere. Our hour of a musement parks continues in a minute from chicago. Ove radio one program continues.

This american life, my glass, you're gona show. Of course, we use a theme, bring you different kinds of stories on that theme today show amusement parks is july is hot. We want to go someplace fun here on the radio.

We've arrived that act two of our program, act two great adventures, when we asked you, our listeners, to call in with your amusement park stories. Nearly three hundred of you did. And whatever producers, january, listen to all of those voice, my mesage SHE joins me now. Hey, jane. Hey, so jane, trends, patterns, what can you tell me?

Carney, ah yeah there is like creepy colonies and hot carney and carney that people married and bunch of people are called and told stories about currencies like making the ride go .

too fast or keeping them .

on right to know these two calls that the play are um from barry silver and penny dani coffin and they had the same exact like crazy honey story only they happened years apart in in different cities but it's fun to imagine they are talking about .

the same guy my musement park story involves the .

gravitation on and me quit because the gravitation on that was like the most popular ride people talked about in the phone calls that someone where it's a cylinder and you climb in IT and you put your .

back up against the inside wall .

of you like the wall.

There was a carney there and he was waving us all in and we had purchased tickets. And I guess our first sign that this was gonna an interesting ride was when he said no to the tickets we offered him and just kind of wave us. And I was working for the world of wonder side show.

Uh, last month i'd made friends with the carney who was running the gravity on. He started up the ride and the music was blaring and I remember was moly cruise. Um doctor, feel good. Anyway, he gave me a private shelling where, uh, i'm writing inside this thing, music blasting and the lights were going and we were spinning around in the centrifugal force was pushing us up against the wall.

The next thing I know this carney steps out from behind his Operating box and comes out into the center fuge and proceeds to pull himself up and places seat on the spending wall and walk over the writer, step by step, with his body completely horizontal to the earth. He's standing on the wall next to me, surfing inside of the gravitation on the right. The right Operators less the control panel to start surfing the inside parallel to the ground.

The force was holding his feet against the wall. And IT was just amazing thing I ever seen. Best experience of my life.

So I know because you told me up before we sit down that a lot of the stories that people caught and tell, where love stories.

tons of love stories or like like stories. You know like summer filings, summer romances, first kisses, um there were people that lost their virgin on rides don't do that um but then there were the proposals. There were a lot of people proposing at amusement parks, some more successful ly .

than others. And in may, my boyfriend proposed me on a roller coaster, and we were on a viper. He said, will you marry? mean? He popped up in the ring by, and the ring fell out of the box and down into the pits of vipers.

IT was a pretty awful. I started trying to get the right Operator to stop the carb. The director of Operations at the park assembled the team of about twenty people and they searched for the ring for hours. And that happened to me. So the cake er here is that that ring was actually my grandmother's ring in they're actually still searching for IT, but we have .

yet to find IT.

So I called natacha actually to see if they'd found IT yet um and he said that the park called her recently and said they had found a ring but that wasn't hers there was .

another engaged .

right right really well it's .

good .

to know that that herpes and say, wasn't the only dummy right?

And then we got bunch of scary calls. This is a scary one. Wendy in Austin, texas, SHE and her friend went, went to the fair and they were getting on a roller coaster. I was like, where those medium s ice fair rollcall ers where there's one big drop in in a loopy loop and um but as he was getting on SHE was .

like fucking around with her purse. I reached up to call the harness down over me and a lot above my hand and I have nothing holding me into the coast. So I look over in her as the a cari guy with a that was running the right looks at me and he pushes the button to go. And the thing starts to go. And i'm telling a wake up, I don't have they see.

but he doesn't stop. So I know. So now she's like going up the hill. So he said he turned her, her friend, and he just decided to wrap her arms and legs around her friend, I know. And so they go down the hill and they go to the loopy loop.

So she's upside down. I know .

under a .

friend height, as I can, to stay inside the ride. And what we really got, scary as we was around the corners I almost got from now, but I didn't SHE said .

that he had whip lash for a week and that he was too Young to realized that SHE probably to suit them. So there's another story from this woman, Susan, her three year old, wanted to go to the fair, but I was super late at night. And so the humor, dm, in their electrical take you, but they figured he would fall asleep on the way there, but he didn't.

He stay awake? Toy said, okay, i'll take you in for one right on the first while and then we'll go back to the car. My husband did put issues on because we did think he'd make IT there.

So he took him to the fares wheel, and he kept point into the scandal, saying that he wanted to go on the scramble. And I said, no, no, no. And we got off the ride.

I held the change for the person behind me to come out. And when I turned back around, he was gone. We could not find him anywhere.

And as we're looking around, and we have a whole group looking for this little three old boy I looked at, and he was inside the gate of the scramble, and the scramble was going. His head was just at the car level. And the carney woman stopped the right, and SHE stopped at a time. He walked over, kicked him up, handed them to me. SHE didn't .

say a word.

and I took him and he said he was really scary. I said that woman was an Angel, and so I will never bad mouth a carony again.

Again, we finally have some unequipped pro chiny material in this story.

Me too.

Hi 啊， my amusement. First story takes place in england, and I was really excited to go on the house right and forget what it's called. Anyways, the door opens, and they are land to a room.

And the door opens in the dark, empty room. And there is a person, a little little percent. He was in the room already, and I thought I was part of, so how? So I start screaming and and he was looking at me, and because I was screaming, he was screaming at me. We are both let me know each other, that we both realized that I was not part of hunted house and that we just win the money with each other, and we pretender like nothing .

happened.

And finally, there were the puke stories.

A lot of people caught about puke. And is the story more than just I was on a rider, I ah yeah .

I was on a ride, I puked or I was on a ride, I got .

puked on I don't I don't like, I like twist the the one that stands .

out for me. This lady was on that motion motion, right? You know, like big boat that strings .

back and and .

so SHE was up in the highest part of the boat and he saw the guy on the other end of the boat start puking. And so then he was like, swing down at no.

And did you see the beauty?

没事， 都 没 出来。

I could see and flow motion this line of omit .

coming towards me to .

about two seconds later. It's blotted red, the entire rights of my bodies.

So where to go?

You can get off the boat.

Jamey SHE is to be a producer here these days. He is the host of the podcast. The dream is a book based on that show got selling the dream. But those are about large scale quintin ally american scams and the people who get caught up in them, which brings us to act three, like what I didn't do in my summer vacation. And sometimes somebody ends at an amusement.

Parker really has no business there at all, who was not about to thrilled at the thrills at the amusement park covers as a teenager, JoNathan gold stine spent a summer working at an amusement park when there was situated right on the beach in wildwood, new jersey. IT is your typical amusing park. On the beach.

There's a board walk, three wooden peers with rower coasters and a fairs wheel and lots of dropped popcorn and hot dog buns with the single state. It's been decades since JoNathan went to work at wildwood, and he always wanted to go back. And so we sent him along with a one of our producers, jain.

He a quicker to listeners. This story has nothing explicit in IT, but IT does make reference to the existence of sax, as does this warning. The smell .

garbage is really bringing IT all back in a rush. Maybe, maybe I could bring back bag with some salt water toughing. After a whole religious rebirth that I won't go to hear, the summer of my sixteen six year found me seriously considering ihai a Robin's school for the fall.

My rabbi suggest that I spend the summer at this religious camp, just to give me a Better idea of what was to come. But my best friend Evans said that summer camp was for suckers, and religious camp was even worse, and that if I came with him to wildwood, he personally make sure I had a good time. I'll get you ell really good.

He wrote like a blood oath in one thousand nine hundred eighty six high school year book that's iled, as in the letter l. And getting l seemed important, especially if I was going to be giving my life over to the tora attacks that place greater emphasis on getting seed, as in circumcised. And so I went to wild word, and now I was back.

How close did you live .

to the pair that you've seen getting here? My sense of direction is in my 4 man， let's like, the whole summer is just like floating around. And I got jara from model and.

The plan was to go down and get jobs. IT was what a lot of teenagers in my town did Evans older brother had done in years earlier and had arranged a job for evan, handing out darts to passes, eager to pop balloons on the board walk. And I was supposed to get a job too.

But on our fourth night there, still without work, I SAT on the edge of my bed and felt that sense of being a failure. This feeling would eventually become a staple in my life, something I grow comfortable with in the gyms, officers and bedrooms. But just then, the feeling was strange and knew, and I didn't quite know what to do with IT.

We lived in a coat boarding house on by a woman with a face like a clenched fist named mrs. D. I spent my days hanging out at events balloon stand, where his boss finally became so tired of having around that, he pulled some strings to get me a job working as a change boy at an arcade. If you walk down the board walk, there was a point where IT looked like the fun had come to an end. My arcade was just a few yards .

passed that do you remember wear on the here yeah where i'm .

thinking i'm trying like I think I mean, if anything, maybe that little shack right over there was the arcade where there's a roller coaster going over IT. Now it's sort like the little house that i'll be. Singer grew up in any hall.

You've still got pizza lers games with unwinnable prizes and the vague threat to violence about to erupt. In other words, wild IT hadn't changed much back then. Everything looked like one thousand nine hundred and eighty six, no one nine hundred and eighty seven though, as IT turns out, the arcade I worked at is long gone.

Even at the time, all the other arcades were carpeted in air condition. But mine was like an out house with all the oldest sankey est games of their joysticks. Having had the joy jerk right out of them years earlier, on the fourth of july, I remember watching the fireworks through a little crack in the wall right above the donkey kong machine. I felt like a Young tony montana just having come to america, except the only person I wanted to kill with myself.

Being a human change machine is just one of the jobs that seems only to exist on the road walk, like the guy who paid to dance in front of the t shirt shop to draw customers, or the girl who blows bubbles all day outside souvenir store.

Yes, that's my from there.

Your whole job is just .

blowing bubbles and some laser.

China, a laser in people's eyes.

No.

no. Of course, the bubble .

girl tells me he is from bulgaria. The bulgarian bubble girl is very Young, looking like first time away from home Young. And as he explains to me her work respons ibi lies SHE is approached by a man who turns out to be her boss. He plans to be kiss on her cheek as though marking his territory. Good summer.

sorry, sorry. This board walks getting bad. And night time this board walk is bad. People stabbing people and shooting people. You go to blush on the board, board the shooting, the board walk.

what goes on?

Another board walk. Sex and drugs. I park on to need my story.

You can see underneath here, and you catch them all the time down on there. They go right down steps and need the board, board. Wow, check on the board boat menu. Yeah, you.

Yeah, right here later. No, boy, he was creepy.

My old boss mike was creepy, too. My goal is war sunglasses and a red skin tight bathing suit that for some reason, and I could never quite father, always appear to be wet. My friend evan said that I was unaware how mike's arms were so short.

He's like a tea, rex Evans said. The first time mike paid me, he had to get all crooked to get his wallet out. Most of the time I was in the arcade to obama myself, and hardly anyone ever came in, just little kids who SAT on the ancient ski bar machines asking for free games. Those old ski bar machines haven't really changed.

Now my technique used to be.

I kind of do a sort of bank shot, like there was a kind of sweet spot that I would hit on the right bank. That was really close.

Wasn't IT you got the lowest amount points you can get?

Feel like my son, i'm taking out. You got the lost one dead. That little barcode is going to be mind no longer on my hand, had to be so frigid when i'm drinking a budweiser.

Mike was an alcoholic, and he left me to open and close the place most of the time. Sometimes he would stag in in the middle of the afternoon and lay down on the lob sided pool table. Once comparably spread out, he had asked me to cover him from head to toe with the stuff of animals for skim ball so we could sleep without getting caught by the old woman who ran the peer.

Every time I put mike to bed, I became more and more convinced that new shiva was the place for me. When he wasn't goofing off drunk, mike was furthering evens work of trying to get me iled. He would invite Nancy, the nineteen nine year old red head who ran the water's game next door over, so we could tell her about how he should divergent alist me.

Nancy was a jersey girl who wore low back shirts that showed off a large, complicated dragon tattoo. SHE told me I was a chinese wind god. And then an old biker boyfriend had given IT to her. IT started at her neck and slivered all the way down into her aps to blow across the tundra.

In the afternoon when business was slow, Nancy would come by and tell me about how mike had just been over pleading on my behalf and how he tried to explain to him that he was just friends. right? Oh yeah, I say swallowing back the hard lump of file tasting virgin ers congealing in my throat the best .

watch the train car. Please listen this music and .

you feel like you're going to around like the corner and you're going to see like joe shi beating someone to death the baseball that it's all I can think about is the song called wildwood days. You hear IT wildness days and wildwood night. My producer, JoNathan, and I walk down the board, walk where we discover what's got to be the very worst job in wildwood.

Most of stuff I do is just off the top of my head is whatever I can pick up on the spot.

This is dots bonus junior. The sounds you hear are of people shooting at him with guns. Dutton's junior is a human paint ball target. He shuffled les back and forth and eggs on the crowd while being splattered like a jacks and polite canvas.

You know, I put IT as blind as I can, cause this is out is on my tax one. So i'm an entertaining, not the danger can. But, basically I get suit up in a hockey gear and I get shot at all night。 And that .

doesn't that IT doesn't start to get to you a little bit. You dream about IT.

I love IT. It's entertaining to me because this is one of the jobs that I could be as creative as I want to be. And no, it's just like, you know what page design you know, when you go in, you can do whatever you want.

Before that human paypal targets simply shuffled from side to side, holding a shield. Then one day that drop his shield and began to moonwalk, soldiery boy was to follow. He also invented shadow boxing at the paint balls and running towards the shooters. Duck is protected by a suit that looks like what you'd come up with if you try to build a missal in man costume of moist newspaper in a poxy gw. People are armed with paypal .

guns yeah that we provide because a lot of people try to know they want to bring the room, but we don't allow that. It's not gonna happen.

So the suit that you that you wear protects you from from any pain.

Um for the most part year there are some weak spots, but I can't say where the weak spots are because a lot of people find out you know then IT can't becomes a little dangerous, you know.

before agreeing to talk with me, just wanted to finish his break with the woman who works next door at the old time me photo place. As IT turns out, she's his wife who we met on this very, very board walk dust might spend this day getting fired out in a cage, but at least on his time off, he had someone to talk to someone with whom to share the cigaret weak spots in his army.

Back when I live there, wild, have this reputation for being a big party town. People were supposed to be scoring like nuts on the board, walk every night, and actually they were. The only real action I got that summer, though, was in the form of a single kiss.

I later refer to IT as the kiss that ruined my summer. IT happened while I was out walking on the board walk. Late one night.

I saw a group of older girls, maybe in the early twenties, coming toward me, one of them a little ahead of the others, was sort of spinning with her arms stuck out and a long blond hair all over the place. Just as he got right up close to me, SHE grabs the back of my neck and put her lips right on mine. I remember if you pulled back, I basically grabs onto a rist.

I didn't wanted to leave. Her friends had to prime my fingers off one at a time as he stood there smiling at me, all stoned in area. That night, back at the boarding house in our room, I spent the rest of the evening obsessing as IT might have been the last one i'd receive until I got married. That kiss pretty much felt like my swinging batch oro od in new shiva, I beat the mysterious one with a past. For the rest of the summer, I couldn't pass a woman on the board walk without thinking that we should somehow be meeting in a kiss, that that how life should really be IT turned walking along the board walk into a relentless drizzle of small but horrible disappointment.

I didn't know if then, but that summer would prove the best one i'd have as a teenager, even though I was worked like an indentured servant, giving every penny of my earnings to mrs. D, even though I made no friends, and even though I only made IT to the beach, but once where I SAT on a military boarding house, washed cloth, exhausted in pale that whole summer, felt like some big fat vacation.

Just because I was sixteen and away from my parents for the first time when I got back home, I didn't end up going to achieve. I didn't bring home many pen pals, money or happy romantic memories, but I did bring back a pair of black pants covered in small White skull. They were really baggie, and I had to wear them with ten inch coughs at the bottom. But when I showed up for my first day back at school, I thought I looked really punk rock. I thought, like anyone who never been held, that they were the pants of someone who got killed all summer along.

Out of the gold stein is the host of the podcast. Heavy weight in the team over there are hard at work on an eight season of that show coming soon. Whereever you get your podcast.

a lot of winter today.

today.

what would you say to get a guy like me to come over?

I don't know if I call the type would spend money a year, you know, was he saying .

that i'm too cool a customer? Is he saying you're too cheap at you?

Yes, I went on the.

Well, the program was british today by jammer y and me with the khosa kani JoNathan and he borrowed a pollo grab and semi was a ship. And Nancy update, the british today shows july snider production help on this rerun from our gill and Cathy mondo special day to build child state alto k.

Martin, jeff pot, steep deca y superman lanza, Young morice p and what would and jersey original music scoring and at one of our show by dave hill featured dave hill on guitar. Our website, this american like that, or you need something to listen to on a long drive during the summer holiday, you can stream from an archive for eight hundred episodes for absolutely free. This american life dot org, this american life is to cover the public radio stations by frx the public radio exchange. Thanks is always to our programs cofounder america. This turtle breaking experiments are finally paying off.

Idea you guys to can feel these turtles IT sounds like a weird, a weird thing that we really have the softish turtles in town. You should feel one. They're really off.

I made a glass back next week with more stories of the american life.

Color feel more. Yes， you rock me out my head.