I was born and raised in Southern California, in the shadow of the mouse and the berry farm. But we didn’t live the E-Ticket life. We were the discount kids. We spent our time on the outskirts of Knott’s Berry Farm, inhaling the smell of fried chicken and boysenberry jam, pretending we were part of the show.
I remember those Model T cars they had on the perimeter. You’d get in, grab the wheel, and steer like you were actually going somewhere. But it was a lie. A beautiful, mechanical lie. The car was on a rail. You could spin that wheel to the left, you could spin it to the right, but you were going exactly where the machine wanted you to go. It was the illusion of control, sold for a quarter.
And I loved it. Because even the illusion was better than the alternative.
Inside the parks, it was a caste system. The rich kids had the A-tickets, the B-tickets, the ones that got you on the Matterhorn, the Space Mountain, the rides that screamed. We had the D-tickets. The slow boats. It’s a Small World. The teacups. The rides that didn’t ask anything of you except to sit there and not vomit.
And that suited me just fine.
Because here is my confession, the one thing that makes me the oddball in a room full of thrill-seekers: I have never been on a roller coaster. Not once.
I’ve stood at the base of Magic Mountain, listening to the wood groan and the chains clank on the Colossus. I’ve heard the screams of the people plunging down the drop, their arms in the air, surrendering to gravity. And I looked at them and thought, You are all out of your goddamn minds.
I hated the line. I hated the noise. But mostly, I hated the surrender.
The one time I broke? It was my grandmother, Bernice. My organic dad’s mom. A sweet woman who somehow talked me onto the Log Ride at Knott’s. “It’s just water, Jimmy,” she probably said. “It’s fun.”
Fun.
We went up the conveyor belt, click-click-click, into the dark. And then, the drop. The bottom fell out of the world. My stomach hit my throat, and my bladder hit the release valve. I pissed myself. Right there in the log. We hit the water at the bottom, a giant, splashing crescendo of humiliation, and I walked off that ride wet in more ways than one.
Even Pirates of the Caribbean scares the shit out of me. It’s dark, it’s damp, there are robots shooting at each other, and you know, you just know, there are two drops waiting for you in the dark. Two moments where the boat decides your fate, and you’re just cargo.
My friends grew up. They raced to the coasters. They sought out the biggest, fastest, scariest drops they could find. And I hid in the corner, holding the churros, watching them scream.
And for years, I thought I was a coward. I thought I was soft.
But then I grew up.
I bought a Mustang. I took that beautiful, American-made machine out onto the Pacific Coast Highway. I put my foot to the floor. The engine roared, the world blurred, and the speedometer hit 120 miles an hour.
And I wasn’t scared. I was calm. I was alive.
And that’s when I realized the difference. That’s when the math finally made sense.
A roller coaster goes 35, maybe 50 miles an hour. It’s safe. It’s engineered. You are strapped in. You cannot crash unless the whole world breaks. But you are a passenger. You are helpless. You are at the mercy of a grease monkey who pushed a green button.
In the Mustang, at 120, death is sitting in the passenger seat, holding your hand. One wrong move, one blown tire, one moment of hesitation, and you are a smear on the asphalt.
But it’s your move. It’s your hands on the wheel. It’s your foot on the gas.
I am not afraid of speed. I am not afraid of danger. I am not afraid of the crash.
I am afraid of the rail.
That’s the analysis, my friend. That’s the author laid bare. You have lived your entire life—the businesses, the divorces, the sudden moves to Hawaii and Vietnam—running away from the rail. You would rather drive your own life off a cliff at 120 miles an hour than let someone else safely guide you around a track at 35.
You aren’t a coward. You’re a control freak. You’re a man who needs to be the one to decide when the drop happens.
And that’s why you’ll never get on the coaster. Because if you’re going to scream, you want it to be because you decided to make the car fly.
