Theme parks. One might be tempted to think that they would be a fun place to work at, like candy stores and artillery ranges. Alas, if one were to give in to this temptation, one would also learn that many things that seems like a good idea, such as Communism and spandex, do in fact create infinitely more human suffering than anyone can possibly imagine. Here follows the story of how I once worked at King’s Dominion, and off all the evil that followed.
I had just graduated from high school, young, free, and without cares, with a smile on my face, a song in my heart, and with my pockets full of wine and hamsters, as the folk of my simple village are wont to say. Thusly I, in my callow exuberance decided to forsake the monkey ranches of my forefathers and get a job at King’s Dominion. Little did I know of the hideous and wretched world of woe into which I so unwittingly wandered that day.
I was assigned to work in the games department, also known as the lie to people and take their money department, though for obvious reasons we usually called it the games department instead. My first task, upon being here assigned, was to work at one of the park’s many water gun booths. Now, for those of you who have lead a life blissfully ignorant of such things, the water gun game is one in which one must get four people to shoot at a target in the interest of winning a race. The winner, of course, is awarded a bootleg Winnie the Pooh, as well as the accolades of all the good people of the Western world. Now, due to the fact that this was a race, there was always at least one winner. Occasionally more, but never less. All the same, you cannot imagine how many people accused me of rigging the game; as if it were a matter of partiality to me. The fact is, King’s Dominion is very much the Cloverleaf Mall of theme parks, and it was a thing most rare to have any girls play the game to whom I might even be tempted to favor.
Furthermore, there was a more or less constant flow of people who wanted to buy the bears (called, among those of us who were not blessed with a great degree of political correctness, Fooh Bears, in honor of their origins in China). There is a certain feeling connected with trying to explain to someone that a game and a store are completely different things, as they wave money at you and become progressively more outraged by your refusal to sell them a bootleg bear. Though I never worked in the retail section there, I can only guess at what their employees must have gone through.
“Good afternoon sir, how can I help you?”
“You see that T-shirt there?”
“Yes sir, it’s merely $19.95.”
“Huh. How about if I just throw a baseball at it and if I can hit it, you give it to me free?”
“I’m sorry sir, but I’m not allowed to do such things.”
“Wretched cur, your plebeian impudence infuriates me! Your manager shall hear of this!”
And then of course, there was the Power Tower. It was one of those old state fair standbys where you hit the thing with a clown hammer, and if you should manage to ring the bell, then victory is yours. Just about every single person who passed through the park felt obliged to either demand a free try or at the very least, accuse me of rigging the game. This latter fact they knew because they had apparently seen it on 60 minutes, which would be far more convincing a source were it not the case that they had also once done an expose on kittens causing brain tumors. Once, in what will forever remain a true highlight of my employment there, a woman calling herself Storm came up and, by virtue of the fact that she claimed to be one of the American Gladiators, demanded a free try. Now, since the only Storm I know of is one of the X-Men, I was already suspicious, but I foolishly pointed out that a person so august and well-heeled as an American Gladiator ought to be able to pay the same price as everyone else in the world without suffering great financial hardship as a consequence. This, it turns out, was not the most diplomatic I might possibly have said.
I would also occasionally be employed at the Scales of Judgement, or as the park called them, Guess your Weight and Age. Here people would give me a dollar and then wait while I decided to either complement them thoroughly, or insult them as, judging by their reactions, most people dared not to do. It was, and probably will remain, the only time in my professional life that I was ever paid by the hour to call people fat.
Well, that’s all the bile I feel like casting upon King’s Dominion today, but be sure to tune in again tomorrow as I set my sights on Kidsville and the Volcano.
