• Terror V.S. Joy


    I trudged up the cold metal steps shivering. I hugged my bare arms, scared that I was even walking up these steps. What am I doing? My mind was blank and unresponsive to the question. Yet my feet kept moving on their own accord.
    I sniffled, standing on one of the metal landings. I smelled strong chlorine, and stale sea air. My Grammy had told me earlier that the Carnival cruise ship‘s, the boat we were on, slide was…I couldn’t remember how long she had said it was but it had been a big number.
    “Mitchie!” I screamed up to my younger yet braver cousin. He turned around in his American flag swim trunks, and wet suit. He waited for me to say something else but when I didn’t he ran up the next few steps to the top. I yelled his name as he laughed at me. I ran trying to catch him forgetting the reason I was mad with him, and smiling. He jumped into the water spot, at the top of the dark tube slide.
    “Mitchell.” I whined as he waited for the lifeguard to say he could go.
    “See ya’ later baby alligator!” he called over the loud water, as I came up the last step. He pushed himself, with his arms, down the dark purple tube. I tried to get back at him by sticking my tongue out at him, but he was gone in a loud “Yahooo!” and rushing water.
    I stepped into the water pool, that he had been in only moments ago. I stared at the swirling pool of water and shivered. The lifeguard, who had thick blond hair and was wearing red swimming trunks with a cross at the bottom , kind of scared me along with the thick air, the dark tunnel I was supposed to go down, and the rushing water.
    “Go.” he said sounding bored waving a hand and readjusting his sunglasses. I watched the little lights in his glasses and was reminded of the Police Shows my daddy watched. The thought made me want to run because the bad people in that show always got into trouble or got hurt. Instead, I took a deep breath like all the brave cartoon characters did and pushed my self in to the dark tunnel. I screamed my lungs out for those brief thirty maybe forty-five seconds.
    I’m not sure when my scream turned from terror, to joy but it had. All that shivering, the chills, the fright. All of it for nothing because this was the time of my life. My first real water slide, my first real scream of happiness. I wish I could have done that everyday, I had realized nothing was better than having fun. I had turned into a real six year old that day. I’d become a girl who wasn’t scared of much of anything. I was a six year old girl who overcame fear.