Pat. No. 2259691 : Automatic Grownup Sickener

I owe my brother a dollar.

You see, I bet him that the carnies at the local County Fair would have noticeably fewer teeth, on average, than the Niagara County Fair in New York. That wasn't the case at all, although it was a close-run thing. Oh, the arcade boardwalk attendants were creepy enough in their own way, I guess, but not nearly to the level I had hoped. And the ride operators seemed polite yet professionally aloof, not "obviously crazy" or "strung out on meth". Pretty disappointing if you ask me - the carny folk in my day were much more colorful.

After taking Ethan to ride the pony and see the clown and tour the 4H tents my wife convinced me to go on a ride called "The Sizzler".

According to Wikipedia, it goes by various names like Scrambler and Twist. What Wikipedia does not mention, however, is that if the time since you were last on one can be measured in decades (like me), you need to stay the hell away from it at all costs.

I won't bother describing the ride to you since you either 1) looked up the Wikipedia reference 2) already know what I am talking about or 3) don't care what I am talking about and went on to see if there are any hints yet regarding the Puzzle for Charity (sidebar on the right).

[For those who are interested Patent Number 2259691 is actually named "Merry-Go-Round". My only guess is that in 1941 they had a vastly different definition of the word "merry" than I understand it now. For the technically inclined, read the third paragraph of the patent for a good chuckle.]

My wife and I sit down and the carny comes over and recommends we switch places, which was cool of him because during a lot of this ride you are pulling over 2 gees and the person on the outside seat really takes the brunt of the forces. We switch and the ride starts up.

Lots of fun. For about 30 seconds.

At that point my wife starts laughing hysterically and treating everyone around us to a non-stop, heavily Doppler-shifted stream of swear words. I became nauseous and lost the ability to focus my eyes on objects outside the ride so I just focused instead on wishing I was dead.

Sometime between 1 minute and 6 hours later the ride gently glided to a halt. As I was nursing my ribs and trying to keep down my breakfast and small instestines my wife hops off and immediately demands money for a candy apple. I guess I should just be happy she didn't jump around and giggle "Again! Again!"

Hey, don't look at me like that. I distinctly remember enjoying this ride in the past, but I am not looking forward to the day that Ethan is tall enough to go on. Hopefully my brother can parlay the dollar I owe him into enough cash by then (stock market, lottery, whatever) so he can hire me a stunt double.