Water Slides and Wristbands

by Chris McGinty of AccordingToWhim.com

Let me talk about the time that my dad and I went to Wet ‘n’ Wild. For those of you who live in the Fort Worth area and are younger than us, you know it as Hurricane Harbor. Wet ‘n’ Wild was in so many ways an 80s name. If you weren’t around in the 80s, you don’t quite understand why.

My dad was in the Air Force for a number of ye… decades. Seriously, I think it was 28 years when he finally retired. His last station was Carswell Air Force Base (AFB). For those of you who live in the Fort Worth area and are younger than us, you know it as Hurricane Harbor… I mean, Naval Air Station Fort Worth Joint Reserve Base (NOSFERATU).

I believe it was the summer of 1990 when Carswell AFB rented the Wet ‘n’ Wild facility for part of the day. After a certain time that day, it was just the AFB workers and their families. This meant practically no lines. My dad and I ran around like teenagers, which made sense for me because I’d just turned 17, and rode each of the slides multiple times before moving on to the next one. It was wild, and for that matter wet. It’s probably the best way to experience a theme park, which is to have the ability to get to each ride multiple times without a heavy wait.

 

These guys are so stuck in the 80s that they believe the names are still Wet 'n' Wild and Carswell.

The biggest relevance of this day to my life was that they gave us these things that went on your wrist to indicate that you were part of the AFB attendees. Being a water park, these wristbands had to be able to hold up for a long time, especially in water. Flash forward a couple of months to me in my last year of high school with people asking, “Why do you still have that on?” And me responding, “Because it hasn’t fallen off yet.” Yep, that was the first of my wristbands. I wonder if my dad realizes he was partially to blame for that.

Chris McGinty is a blogger who really needs to get out to some concerts, because his wrists are currently nude.