It was the summer of 2016, the day I stop being insecure about my scar on my stomach. My sister, Brittani, asked if my friend, Autumn, and I wanted to go to Noah’s Ark with her friend, Alex. At first I said no because I had troubles gaining weight and had to get a tube placed in my stomach. When I got it removed, I had a scar from where the tube got taken out on my stomach. I was very insecure about it and I didn’t want people to look at me funny or ask me what happened, then I thought why not go, it will be fun. Even though I was nervous about going, I told myself that I will eventually have to show it in public and why not go now where I will see a ton of people, but never see these people ever again.

We woke up and drove to Ripon to pick up Alex, then he drove the rest of the way. Once we got to Wisconsin Dells, we decided to stop at a gas station to get something to eat. I ended up getting a glazed donut and I remember the sweet taste it had. We drove down the road and got to Noah’s Ark before they opened, so we had to wait in the car for awhile. I looked over to the car parked next to us and I said, “Look! That kid needs to wipe his nose!” I saw a huge booger hanging from this little boys nose. Everyone in the car started laughing.

Noah’s Ark was just about to open, so we decided to get out of the car and grab all of our things. We walked to the entrance and handed the lady, wearing a red Noah’s Ark t-shirt with a jacket over it, our tickets. Once we got in, we rented a locker for the day so we could put our things away. Then we had to do the worst thing, apply sunscreen. I held my breath because I hate the smell of sunscreen, but I knew that once I had to breathe again, I would smell it.

We started walking to the first water slide. After a long walk, we got in line for the Black Thunder. We were the next in line and I watched as the people in front of us went down and listened to hear the scream coming from them. We got into the yellow tube and went down the fast and slippery waterslide. My hair got all messed up and was in my face and all tangly, so I ended up pulling it back into a ponytail. The next waterslide was the curvy Scorpion's Tail. You have to weigh at least 90 pounds in order to go on this slide, so I ended up having to wait because I didn’t weigh that much, which didn’t bother me any because I was too scared to go on it even if I did weigh enough. We continued to go on waterslides until we were getting hungry to eat lunch. By the time we actually ate, I was so hungry that I could’ve eaten a horse.

Cold, wet, and tired, we walked to get our towels. We grab our things and headed to the car. I fell asleep right away. When we were about 30 minutes from Ripon, I got woken up from Alex slamming on his brakes. I had no idea what had happened. I heard him swear, which wasn’t something that he normally did, and all of a sudden we heard this loud bang. Someone hit us. Alex looked back and asked if Autumn and I were okay, we said that we were fine. We all got out of the car and waited for the other driver to get out of her car. We all asked each other if everyone was okay, which everyone was. We waited for the police to show up. I asked Brittani what happened. She said that a car coming from the opposite way had a dog in the back seat and the dog ended up jumping out of the window and ran right in front of us causing Alex to slam on his brakes. Luckily, the dog was perfectly fine. The dog's owner took him to an emergency hospital, but from what we saw, the dog was fine. The cops showed up and asked for all of our drivers licenses, luckily Autumn and I had ours. The cop came back about 10 minutes later and said that we were free to go.

We continued our drive back to Ripon. We got there and Brittani drove the rest of the way back to Oshkosh. Once we got home, I realized that I was as red as a lobster. I couldn’t believe I was so burned! The next couple days Brittani and I ended up living off of aloe.