My Trip To Sea World...To Be Read in Vincent Price’s Voice.

You will need water.

It will cost $2.89 a bottle.

You will try to sneak it in.

They will stop you.

You will flock to water fountains.

The fountains will be grimy with the thick slobber of a million parched civilians.

And you will decide it is better to die of thirst,

than to die of whatever is living on that silver fountain doohickie.

You will see the whale in all his glorious aquamarine water.

Yet, you will have none.

None of that….water.

The whale is trained to mock you.

Remember, he is a killer.

Don’t buy his stuffed animal.

If you ever make it out of the park alive…hydrated…

you can find that blessed stuffed whale at every Garage Sale in America.

For 25 cents.

Instead of $15.

But, why would you want a memento…

Dig an empty Dasani water bottle out of the trash…

Put that on your bookshelf…

That’ll bring back memories.

Remember the sing songy shrill screeches of the whale,

“See the water…wouldn’t you like some water…aren’t you thirsty for our water…you are drying up like a prune without water…it only costs $2.89 cents for 12 ounces of water...Dasani…Dasani is our water….”

And you will remember the moment…when the giant tease almost splashes you…just almost…even though you are sitting squarely in the Splash Zone, with your hands outstretched, praying incessantly for just a drop of refreshing water to splash on your sizzling forehead,

But no. 

There is no water here.

No water for you.

And so you go back out to the pathways of black asphalt,

where you walk along hotter than you have ever been in your entire life,

pushing a howling baby in a stroller that is weighed down by bags and bags of items you snuck into the park…so much that the net compartment on the bottom of the stroller is actually dragging on the black asphalt as you plod.

You are making sparks.

But you didn’t sneak in water,

Because they will let you bring in anything at all,

salty chips…melting granola bars…crack cocaine…

But no water. 

They will confiscate all water at the gate,

And they'll dump it into Shamu’s tank.

And you continue plodding on the steaming black asphalt, moving forward to another “show,” and you see the actors beside you on the black asphalt walkway, smiling and talking happily and hydratedly...

minions, paid by the Big Whale, to confuse you, to keep you going.

You smell your skin cooking, and you notice you smell just like McDonald’s French Fries.

You sicken yourself.

Yet, you crave fries

Then, just when you are at the end of your rope, 

your husband, who did not go on this trip with you, calls your cell phone, and he will say in an annoyed, accusatory, calloused voice, 

“ I see 25 charges of  $3.15,” 

and you will pry your parched lips apart to say,

“The Dasani…

and its tax….”

Why...oh why...are the pathways black asphalt?

Why not cobblestone or mulch or dirt?

Or something whimsical?

Okay...Okay...Why not plain ol cement....

Whatever happened to plain ol cement....

You drop an egg that you have scavenged from a nest,

And it fries up nicely on the blacktop,

And  your children, dehydrated like jerky, crack (seriously, they are cracking) a smile and try to cry happy tears over the frying egg, but they cannot produce tears.

You spray more sunblock on their skin.

More sunblock.

More sunblock.

More and More…

You freak out and start spraying strangers with sunblock.

Water, water everywhere,

And not a drop to drink.

Not even a drop to cry.

But you still know how to sweat.

Oh yes.

You are one hot sweaty mess of unspeakable magnitude.

Your body is kicking out the last water it has.

Gushes of french fry-smelling sweat go sliding down your back like rapids – the waistband of your bathing suit is a saturated sponge, and when you finally sit, you think you have wet your pants, and you have…just  not with urine…

because you have not peed in 12 hours…

and you may never pee again.

And you pull your bathing suit away from your sticky bottom – not even discreetly…you are way past discreet…

And…oh, by the way…you didn’t need to wear your bathing suit that is lodged now in your buttcrack

Because the waterpark is extra –

Thas right –

Your ticket does not permit entrance to the water park,

So the actors,

Squealing over yonder on the big waterslide poking into the clouds,

They are just taunting you, too…

If you listen hard enough, you can hear what the actors are squealing from the slides,

They squeal,

“Dasani.”

This is Sea Inferno.

No water for you.

No water in the Sea for you.

Unless you want to cough up

$2.89...

 ($3.15 with tax).