May 162015
 

I don’t know that I would really call this a tradition, but sometimes on Mother’s Day, Henry will act like The Best Man On Earth and take me to DelGrosso’s Amusement Park, about 2 hours outside of Pittsburgh, so that I can ride the fuck out of the Wacky Worm and shovel potato salad down my throat in the style of violent porno cunnilingus.

Or, you know, pie eating contest.

Plus, moms ride for free on Mother’s Day.

This year, we didn’t have to rent a car! Yay new car! We listened to Dance Gavin Dance THE WHOLE WAY THERE because it was Mother’s Day. Oh OK, let’s be real: every day is my day when it comes to radio control. The best part is that the stereo system is so good that Chooch chattered away in the backseat and I COULDN’T HEAR A WORD HE SAID! Ahhh, a mother’s bliss.

However, I did hear him pipe up from the backseat and request Circa Survive. I was like, “WHAT SRSLY? You want me to put on Circa Survive?!” and he said, “Yes. ‘Act Appalled’.” I almost broke my finger off in my frantic attempt to queue up this song post-haste, because I have been waiting NINE YEARS for my son to like Circa Survive. I used to listen to their first album constantly when I was pregnant with him! And I tell him that all of the time and he just rolls his eyes. But on this day? On this day, he sat in the backseat and sang along because that little fucker knows all of the words and has probably always liked them but he’s just like HIS DAD in  that regard.

 Henry pretended to hate The Used for like, 6 years!

God, what a great Mother’s Day present, hearing Chooch’s little boy voice singing along with Anthony Green. That was way better than the makeup from Ulta, and it was FREE!

My second favorite part of the day was when we got to Delgrosso’s and the old lady inside the admission booth looked at me skeptically and asked, “Are you….the mom?” YES I AM NOW GIVE ME MY FREE WRIST BAND, HERE JUST PUT IT ON ABOVE MY OTHER WRISTBAND FROM LAST NIGHT, THANKS.

And then right away, it was Wacky Worm time!

Chooch wanted to ride in separate worm-compartments and I threw an actual fit while we stood in line, and then accused him of not giving a shit about my feelings, and on MOTHER’S DAY OF ALL DAYS. Finally, he was like, “Jesus Christ, OK. Pick a damn seat!”

I hit my leg SO HARD when I sat down. The Wacky Worm is not kind to us tall kids.

Immediately after this, I went up to Henry and said, “FOOD.” He put in our pizza, came over to the bench Chooch and I were slouched upon, making fun of people, and handed me  the receipt. “Here. Listen for our number to be called while I go and order the potato salad.”

WTF? How did this become my problem!?

Of course, Chooch and I forgot about our big important task almost immediately, until I realized a few minutes later that a number greater than ours was being called. “WTF, did we miss our number?” I asked Chooch. So we got up and stood closer to the pizza windows, and I totally panicked while numbers were called out of order because HOW WILL WE EVER KNOW IF THEY CALLED OURS ALREADY?

It was so confusing and I kept emitting audible groans of disgust and anguish because why do I have to do this thing?

! It was probably the worst part of my day, maybe.

But then our number was called for real and Chooch and I had already devoured our slices by the time Henry came back to our table with his hot dog (which Chooch took from him) and the potato salad.

Henry is always the last one to eat.

Anyway, I was really mad because one of my biggest pet peeves is when Chooch gets food all over himself. I feel like, at the age of 9, he should maybe have a better grasp on his food-handling by now, I don’t know?! So I said, “PLEASE do not get pizza on  yourself, I’m begging you” and by the time I turned back to my own pizza slice, a glob of sauce had sluiced right off his chin and plopped right smack onto the crotch of his shorts.

I called him Sauce Crotch for the rest of the day and now I’m going to draw him a picture of Sasquatch wearing stained shorts, but don’t worry, he’ll also be holding a slice of pizza in his hand so it will look less like a menstrual mishap.

All you potato salad aficionados out there, ya gotta try DelGrosso’s. It is fucking ON POINT. I referred to it as “Creamy sex” once and I stand by that statement. Henry bought some shitty supermarket brand potato salad the next day and I was like, “Why do you have to bring this ghetto shit in my house? The day after Delgrosso’s, really? You’re killing me.”

On the Crazy Mouse, Chooch practiced all of his swears in one long tangent and I just don’t care to stop him from swearing anymore. Just don’t do it in school and I’m fine with it. Parenting sometimes takes mental strength which I do not have a lot of.  I feel tired just typing that out, to be honest.

There was some young kid on the carousel who had a 1990s Billy Ray Cyrus mullet and of course I took an entire series of photos, but I’m not going to post them here because I have a tiny shred of common sense that is telling me that might not be wise. (I’m trying to be smarter about blogging, and it’s been a struggle.) But my lord, was that mullet majestic.

The thing about Delgrosso’s is that once you ride the Wacky Worm and the Crazy Mouse, it’s like “………………….”

It’s a really small park and the rest of the rides are your typical carnival/county fair assortment: Paratroopers, Tilt-A-Whirl, carousel, Music Express, pirate ship…basically it’s a bunch of different ways to self-impose whiplash and/or motion sickness. I’ve gotten ridiculously sick here before, to the point where I had to lay down across a bench and pray to the Vertigo gods to reset my eyeballs and put the color back in my cheeks. I try to pace myself now, which means Paratroopers/45 minutes of nothing/ice cream/Music Express/45 minutes of nothing/watch Chooch play games/Tilt-a-Whirl/OMG I’M DYING LET’S LEAVE/go home.

Chooch is like, “I can’t wait until I can ride this shit with my friends and not my weird MOM.”

I couldn’t get  my eyeballs to stop moving back and forth after this ride and it was concerning.

We let Chooch go off and buy his own drink and then for a good 5 minutes there was a mild concern that he had been kidnapped. Don’t worry, he came back to us. Just like a boomerang.

A sweaty, foul-mouthed boomerang.

I wonder what it’s like to be Chooch.

Pre-Tilt-a-Whirl nausea.

The Tilt-a-Whirl was being worked on all day but we just happened to be standing near it when they declared success and a Delgrosso’s ride operator walked on to give it one more test run.

“IS IT OK NOW?” I called up to him, and he kind of nodded, sort of, so Chooch and I raced to get in line and Henry was like, “Seriously? The gate isn’t even open yet.” It took everything in my power not to turn around and shout “FIRST!!!” in the faces of the asshole kids behind us. MOVE A LITTLE FASTER NEXT TIME.

I guess the ride operator was trying to overcompensate for the ride being closed all day, because he left us on there for a good three minutes.

That’s about two minutes too long in Spinny Ride Time.

And you know how sometimes the Tilt-a-Whirl is a big fat dud? Your car doesn’t get any good spins? Well, this particular go-around was chockfull of violent spins, which were ultra giggle-inducing at first, but then it quickly turned to stomach-churning and I was afraid that I was going to giggle chunks of potato salad right out of my open mouth, so I was pretty quiet for the last two minutes.

When I stumbled off the ride, Henry was waiting there to say, “Good for you” with that smug fucking look on his face. And then, “So, I guess you’re ready to go home then?”

Twist my arm.

But first! One last ride on the Wacky Worm. Never too sick for the Wacky Worm. (Until I am.)

I wanted Henry to carry me to the car but he was just like, “You haven’t lost THAT much weight.”

***********

The next day, we were in our weekly meeting and our boss asked if we all had a nice Mother’s Day. Glenn spoke up and said, “Tell everyone what you did, Erin!” because he knows I hate talking in our meetings, so I mumbled that I rode the Wacky Worm but out of everyone in the room that day, only Glenn and Amber1 know about my Wacky Worm obsession so I mumbled a brief explanation and everyone was kind of like, “Oh. Ok.”

#misunderstood
FUN FACT: If you Google image search “Wacky Worm”, a picture of Glenn comes up on the first page.

  3 Responses to “Motherlovin’ DelGrosso’s”

  1. What an awesome mothers day! I wish we had more amusement parks, and they had cool rides, and Correy didn’t get sick riding fucking EVERYTHING.

  2. “That was way better than the makeup from Ulta, and it was FREE!”

    Tolhurst! That’s some serious shit if it tops Ulta products.

    And then I thought to myself, wow, how did she not get the barfs at Canobie Lake? Because we did the Tilt-a-Whirl and then the German Torture Device for the second time and the spin around in the dark ride that used to play disco in there, and nobody got sick. Good on you!!

    OMG a picture of Glenn DOES come up on the first page! I’m dying!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

    • Aw now I miss Canobie! I think I was less pukey there because it was much larger than DelGrosso’s, so we walked around a lot in between rides and then rode non-spinny things too. That German Torture Device, OMG! We rode one similar to that at another park last year except everyone sat facing out and it wasn’t as much fun.

      Remember when Chooch fell off the railing??? Lol.

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