The fitness activity that kicked my ass
And it all went down in an aquapark meant for six-year-olds at the Jersey Shore
Hello all. I’m sure your inboxes and text chains are flooded with substacks and emails and rants about the dumpster fire of a presidential debate last night.
I’m not here to give you that. There are people way more qualified than I am on those subjects. No I am here to tell you all about how I got my ass kicked on a child’s inflatable water park in Ocean City, New Jersey this week.
Now I have not been to the Jersey shore for a proper vacation since high school. Back when I wore dark lip liner with some Revlon coffee bean lipstick (if you know it, you know it), chugged St. Ides fruit punch forties and smoked Parliament Lights like a Brat Packer. The nineties were a special time to be a teenager.
Things were different this time around. Now I have three small kids. I have a husband. The only alcohol my body can handle without getting a massive hangover is a light tequila spritzer and I think Revlon discontinued coffee bean. But the shore was still the shore. Not much has changed in the past couple of decades down there and now I needed to find fun kid-friendly activities for when my small children inevitably got sick of the beach after a couple of hours.
All week I promised my six year old I’d take him to the inflatable aqua park that he spied on a drive. I held it over his head for good behavior and finally had no choice but to go. The catch….when we got there, he didn’t want to go it alone.
You may think other parents would join their kids on this monstrosity of plastic floating in the bay, but no. Everyone else seemed content to stay dry and unscathed on benches up on the pier, happily playing Sudoku on their phones while I strapped on a stinky life jacket and followed my oldest kid around the slippery maze.
Look at this form!
My first realization in all of this is that I would truly suck balls if I ever got on The Floor is Lava. I just do not have what it takes to stay on a slippery surface, to keep my balance, or to rebound from a fall smack on my ass with glee.
I also realized that this aquapark is leaving a lot of cash on the table.
Yes. They play the unedited version of Shoop for the children here. I appreciate that.
This needs to be a fitness class for middle aged women with no pelvic floor. They can call it Splish Splash YOUR CORE BITCHES.
They could charge big money to have a fitness instructor yell encouraging epithets at a bunch of middle aged women a few times a day to race around this thing. It’s a better core workout than a Pilates double with the added bonus of being reminded to shave your bikini line every time you slide down the plastic and get a wedgie in your Summer Salt suit, hence exposing a massive seventies style bush to the children.
I’m so sore as I write this. My triceps are killing me from dragging myself up the ladders every time I wiped out in a tornado of arms and legs and snow white puckered flesh. The middle of my body has never quaked so hard as I tried to keep my balance before being ambushed by the Grabowski twins and their innate sense of balance.
And when I did wipe out I ended up in the freezing Atlantic Bay, which is essentially a cold plunge strong enough to wipe out your anxiety about getting up and doing it all again.
It was terrible and also great.
I think that line sums up most vacations with kids. Terrible and also great. We rarely see the terrible on the social medias, but it is there. Every single day I was with my kids at the beach this week was terrible and also great.
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