Day 27: Never Have I Ever... Appreciated Overcoming A Childhood Fear

I was 5 years old and uncontrollably bawling. I didn’t know it then, but this was to be one of those scarred-for-life moments. At the time, I just couldn’t understand why the blue-jean-overalls-wearing roller coaster operator didn’t notice that I was crying and stop the kiddie ride from going around in a circle yet a fourth time. As the ride dipped and rose, I kept wishing it was my mom’s arm around me, and not my little brother, four or five cars ahead of me.

Just before I graduated the eighth grade, my class took a one-last-grade-school-hurrah field trip to Cedar Point – America’s Roller Coast (and that it is). I waited in the longer-than-a-lifespan lines with my friends, walked toward each coaster’s cars, and then kept going right on through so that when the ride was over, I’d be on the other side to join my friends as they disembarked from the steel thrillers. I was simply terrified of roller coasters from my childhood traumatic experience, and was not about to repeat it on America’s fastest or tallest or even pitiful-excuse-for-a-thrill-ride roller coaster.

I probably went a handful of times between that eighth-grade trip and a trip I took my junior year of high school with my friends Erin, Jessica, and then-boyfriend Jimmy. I had been doing my typical go-to-Cedar-Point-for-the-line-waiting routine until we got in line for the then-newest roller coaster – Millennium Force – which at the time was the world’s tallest and fastest roller coaster. It was then that Jimmy informed me that I’d be riding this ride.

Erin, Jessica, and I at Cedar Point junior year of high school.

“Yeah. Right,” I said, to his resistance of my dismissive attitude.

“You’re going and you’ll like it. I promise,” he said, making my stomach do flip-flops, and not so much in the good way, but the I’m-going-to-throw-up-and-I’m-not-even-on-the-coaster way. I’ve definitely grown out of having men walk all over me, but at the time I felt this unreasonable urge to please my boyfriends – very much to a fault.

So I begrudgingly got on the ride, somehow snapped the belt buckle with shaking hands, pulled the puny padded restraint to my waist, and immediately wished I hadn’t been so agreeable.

The coast to the top took hours (it actually does take an exceptionally long time to reach the top of that first hill) and although that first drop was terrifying (it’s so steep the track actually disappears for a few seconds), I hesitantly found myself getting caught up in the fun and excitement of Jimmy’s yelling “yeah… YEAH!” in my ear.

And after the ride was over, I found that the fear made it all the more thrilling and yeah… it was fun. Never have I ever appreciated someone forcibly coercing me to do something  before or since, and I can say that this breakthrough of overcoming my childhood fear was one of the only good things that came out of this particular relationship.

This moment ended up paving the way for two of my favorite assignments while a staff writer at The Blade newspaper: coverage of Cedar Point’s new rides Maverick and Skyhawk. (Ignore how terrified I look in both photos. I swear it was fun!) It’s also led to much more fun times at Cedar Point – where the only time I’m on the other side of a roller coaster’s line is after I’ve had a blast riding it.