Thursday 22 May 2014

Brave Actions

Sometimes being brave means standing up for yourself or facing a difficult situation or signing up for something you've been to scared to do. Sometimes it means standing in line to get on a roller coaster that didn't look so bad from far away. Then that roller coaster stops two rides before yours at the safety check because two people weren't buckled in... there's a loop... you go upside down. It means staying in that line even though all your inside voices are telling you to get the hell out. I stayed, I rode it twice (they send every ride twice, I would have been fine getting off after the first go). I screamed bloody murder the whole ride- twice. I hurt my throat but I was glad I stayed. I am not sure if I had fun or not but the other two I was with had fun laughing at me and maybe that's why I was there.

Roller Coaster at Calaway Park outside of Calgary.

Sometimes being brave means walking out onto a glass floor 160m up and watching the teeny tiny cars below. It means holding your breath when you take that first step. It means asking the youngsters beside you to "please stop dancing on the glass floor", it means to breath slowly as you tell your brain that you will not plummet to your death. The brain is a marvellous thing and it certainly played a few mind games with me while I was out on the floor. Anna was so brave, she came out, freaked out and asked "What if it breaks?" and then left. She came back and stood with me and then all on her own. She was so proud and we cheered he on. Cory on the other hand stayed off, he couldn't take a step, looking down alone made him queasy but we love him anyways.

Glass floor at the Calgary Tower. 


ps. I read the brochure after we came down, it read "less than an inch of glass between you and the bustling city street below", LESS THAN AN INCH! thank goodness I read it after.

1 comment:

Kathleen Ruelling said...

Oh, good Lord, you are brave. First of all, that would be me - totally - on the roller coaster. I rode the kiddie coaster at Canada's Wonderland and nearly had heart failure. And the glass floor...CN Tower has one of those, too. My children were LAYING on it. I couldn't even peak over the edge of the glass and look down without wanting to hurl. My sister in law has a photo of me on the glass floor...I didn't look down - I just took a step on, smiled for the picture, took a step off. I captioned it "smiling on the outside, screaming in terror on the inside". You're brave!