What will Aaron do when he comes face to face with The Wave? Join us for a tale of survival and growing up too fast.
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Story created & performed by: Aaron Calafato
Senior Audio Engineer: Ken Wendt
Additional vocals: Cori Birce
Art: Pete Whitehead
Music: thomas j. duke
S3 Episode 2: The Wave - powered by Happy Scribe
Hi, I'm Drena from Washington State. I've been a 7 Minute Stories listener ever since I heard Yellow Bird on NPR. Aaron presents his stories with great enthusiasm, and you can hear the excitement and his voice, which immerses you into the story. The diverse topics from current issues to Aaron's life stories and guest speakers keep me listening on 7minutestoriespod.com.
You're listening to 7 Minute Stories with Aaron Calafato. This is season 3. If you want to connect with us or grab some merch, visit us at 7minutetories.com. That's the number 7minutetories.com. This episode, The Wave.
I always felt that I was born an adult. Even when I was a kid, if anybody ever said or indicated that I was actually a child, I would get angry about it. I wasn't having it. I was like, "I am not a kid." I don't know why, because I clearly was a child. But in my mind, I just really not only wanted to be an adult, but I felt like an adult, and I always felt it was an insult when someone treated me or talk to me like I was a child. So my pursuit of adulthood at a very young age came to a head at an amusement park and almost ended in my death.
So let me take you back. I'm about 10 years old, and I go to this amusement Park called Geauga Lake. If you're from Ohio, you probably know what I'm talking about. Geauga Lake was in the Cleveland area, Northeast Ohio area, and it was like a second-tier amusement park compared to Cedar Point, which is also in Ohio. But that's like top-of-the-line. Geauga Lake was awesome. Wasn't quite as good.
It would later become a six flags, but it was still a really good amusement park, and it was closer. So it was a great place to go. Lots of roller coasters, and they also had a water park. So you could do two things at once, and by the way, there's this guy, reminds me of Geauga Lake. If you're from Ohio, you know what I'm talking about. There's a legend that there is this guy, and I've seen him. He would have a season pass, and he would ride the rotor from the moment the park opened until the park closed for the entire duration of the season it was open.
I've always wondered what happened to that guy. If he's still around and how he's doing. Anyways, I'm about 10 years old, we get to the park and we go on the regular rides first, and this ride that I was on, it wasn't really a ride, it was this giant slide. You would have to get in these potato sacks, and you would go from the top and it had a bunch of different hills, but you'd fly down these slides.
It was like three of them lined up next to each other. By the way, I've said this before, I was a tiny kid all the way through high school. But I was so small, so tiny, so light that when it was my turn to go down, I sit down and the guy goes, "Wait," and then he goes, "Okay, you can go ahead." I'm in the potato sack, and I start at the top of the hill and I get stuck. It's like gravity was like, "Hey, this dude's too light. Let him float." That's how light I was. I wasn't heavy enough to go down the slide. So I got stuck and I couldn't really get out of the potato sack.
I'm holding up the ride. It's becoming a scene now. I'm starting to get embarrassed, and the person running the ride, this lady in a tower, gets on a megaphone and she goes, "There's a little boy on the slide. Repeat, there's a little boy stuck on the slide." I was so pissed that she had called me a little boy in front of everybody at Geauga Lake that I finally am able to get out of the little potato sack and I stand up on the slide and I'm pointing at her shaking my fist, and I'm screaming, "I am not a little boy."
Eventually, I have to walk down the slide, red in the face. I'm so embarrassed, and we decide to go to the water rides. The one water ride we started at, which was my favorite, was called The Wave. The Wave was literally this giant pool of water, and it would produce this oceanic-type wave. It's like, think about the ocean spray label on the cranberry juice, that a wave. But you'd have to wait about ten minutes for it to produce this wave, and when it did, it would create this huge crashing wave that people would try to ride the wave and imagine there's hundreds and hundreds of people.
You could barely see the pool water. In-floating devices and floats and all this stuff. My mom takes me there and she goes, "Stay in the shallow end because you're too little. You shouldn't go out there where all the adults are." There were kids out there too, but she was just worried, and she goes, "Stay in the shallow end." I said, "Mom, I'm not a little boy. I'm going out into the wave. I won't be suppressed like this."
She goes, "Okay, just please be careful." As I start walking through the shallow end, I already lose sight of her because there's so many people. I just have swim trunks on, no floating device, and I'm working my way through, and I look around at all these little kids in the shallow end, I'm like, "I don't want to be where the little kids are. I want to go out where all the adults are." So I go further and further out. Water is getting deeper and deeper. It's just almost at my neck, and I'm starting to have to tread water now.
I'm heading out there and I can hear the machine of the waves starting to suck in all the water and everyone's starting to cheer because the waves's about to come. I get out there and now I'm almost cramped in a crowd, and I can barely tread water without hitting somebody. All of a sudden the wave starts, and I look up and I thought at this moment, "Holy shit," because not only is the wave about to crash on top of me, but everybody else riding the wave and their floating devices will too.
So I start trying to swim away from the wave to get back to the shallow end with the kids and the wave and everybody on the wave come crashing down on me. I almost get knocked out because I get hit by so many people. I'm trying to swim underwater and hold my breath. By the time I get my bearings, I realize I got to get to the surface because I'm running out of breath, and when I try to get to the surface, I can't because there's too many people above me, and too many flotation devices that it's blocking any way for me to get out.
I'm starting to lose breath and I'm pounding my head against people's butts and their legs and I'm trapped and I can't get out and starting to scream underwater. I'm starting to fade. I was starting to lose consciousness, and the only thing I could do was bite someone's ass. So I swim up, I get a big bite of some person's ass and I bite as hard as I can, and they flip over and I sprout out of the water like little Mermaid and I go, "I'm alive."
That person didn't even know who I was and they couldn't even find me because there's so many people, and I hear them going, "What the hell was that?" I start swimming towards the shore. Start swimming back to the shallow end, past the little kids. I start swimming towards my mother, heading to her, going back to my mom because I knew I was just a little boy. I needed my mom, and I almost died and I was scared. Since that day, I've moved slowly into adulthood. Because it's dangerous out there.
Seven Minute Stories is created and performed by Aaron Calafato. Our senior audio engineer is Ken wendt. Our resident artist is Pete Whitehead. Original music by TJ Duke. If you or your company needs help starting a podcast, Aaron and Ken's company Valley View does just that. Reach out to them at valleyview.fm. Special thanks to our partners at Evergreen Podcasts, and I'm Cori Birce. Make sure to tune in next week for another story.
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