It was a long day, decent weather with hints of misty clouds drifting along the quiet skies—and I was sitting inside, watching TV, which had nothing good on, of course; specially the cartoons and while the Florida air was waiting for me to open the door, just wanting to come inside the freezing home. Soon enough a small lizard—I think that was a gecko— scurried across the pavement near the pool, into the crack of the sliding door right next to where I was sitting. I got up, curious as I was, and crouched down, pressing my face against the screen door to see if it was still there. I got a nice diamond shaped pattern on my cheek from that.

Sliding the screen door carefully, I held a red plastic cup, getting closer to the small gecko. It was a bit red, but overall green baby lizard. Closer and closer I got to it, it swayed its head with my movement when it got out of the corner, staring me down. Slowly, I counted in my head, almost afraid of catching the poor thing, and in a deft movement I hit the cup down, hopefully trapping it inside. Unfortunately, the gecko was faster than me and waddled oddly, quickly into the small patch of grass between the two houses. I’ve lost it for good, but honestly, I wouldn’t have caught it. I can never catch those geckos. It was either out of fear of getting bit or just afraid I’d harm them by accident.

Later that day, toward the late evening, I was playing my DS as everyone watched TV or yapped on about nothing. I didn’t really care. All of it was kind of tuned out at the moment. I couldn't really hear them because I was in my own world of adventure on this little portable device. But one voice stuck out, breaking into my fantasy world.

My older cousin, who is around his late twenties if I remember correctly, had came back home to tell us the news about a amusement park that's open for the weekend only. Sounded like fun, right? To me it did for a second or two. All I think with amusement parks are scams and bad rides. Obviously, I still went for the ride there with my two older cousins and my brother to the park because I really had nothing better to do.

Well, to my surprise, it was really what I thought it was going to be like. It was for one, disgusting, and two; the people there were just as awful. First, getting in you see a towering Ferris wheel, decorated with bright lights –not even colorful I mind you-- and it didn't look like much people went on it. The beams were old looking, rusted even. It had that crusty brown thing growing around like fungus.

My older cousin, who suggested on going, got scammed off his money after we were there for at least ten minutes. The woman kept egging him on to keep playing when he was so close to winning the game console. He really was. Two rings a away from getting it. But he kept going and missing countless times and he got stressed about it. Another few minutes passed, we finally moved on to the rest of the park. My aunt is not going to be happy about the money, but we never told her. Ahah.

Browsing over the other boring, yet creepy games, I glanced over at the screaming people nearby. They went up and down on the bigger rides, which went all the way into the dark, moonlit sky. It gave me a queasy feeling in my stomach. So, to distract myself from the noise I watched my relatives go down a big red slide. In the back of my head I thought I should try a ride for once in my life. To see how it was, you know? Since I can remember I never liked rides, big or small. The death machines scared me and my mom or someone in my family would keep asking why I wouldn’t go on one that wasn’t so bad. I just couldn’t. Didn’t feel like dying, maybe that’s why? Finally, after a long contemplating process, I came to an answer.
I wanted to try the second biggest ride the park had there.

Of course, I made my older brother come along with me, so I wasn’t alone on the swing-of-death ride. He really didn’t want to go on, but I still forced him. I’m such a good sister, right? One step after the other, I sat down on the dark seat, buckling myself tight and gulped, waiting for the upcoming doom. Couple minutes later the giant swing started to rise higher and higher until it was high enough to start to swing back and forth. Oh, and the good part of it was that it spins. It spins. While you are already in high altitude; it spins. Those were the worst kind of rides. The experience I had on that thing was just straight up awful. I couldn’t even keep my eyes open. It kept feeling like I was floating in air and had that sinking feeling like I was about to fall fifty feet below. When the damn hellish ride was over, I wobbled behind my brother, holding onto his shirt for a while. I was what, fourteen or fifteen when this happened? And I remembered everything in detail after stepping off the platform.
Everyone said I was getting very pale and shaky, so I sat down and they gave me some Sprite to make me feel better. Then it happened. My cheeks filled with mush and I instantly held my mouth from throwing up everywhere, but some of it leaked out. Whoops.

My cousin got me a trash bin to puke in and I did right away. Yeah, I think this was the last time I was going on any ride in my life.

All that food I had for dinner a few hours ago came up in a nice array of colorful browns and whites. Oh, that must have been mashed potatoes! And was that carrots too? I don’t even remember what I had by the looks of the vomit.

Lovely isn’t it?