The Long Awaited Tale

When I was in high school, they opened an amusement park in Birmingham. It was part of Birmingham's continuing "we're just as good as, if not better than, Atlanta" program and, in another strong pr move, the park was called "Visionland" because it represented the dream of a bigger and better Birmingham. It almost brings a tear to the eye, doesn't it? Yes, Visionland was filled with wonders that it can be hard to find in your traditional amusement park. Sure, there was a log ride and a roller coaster, but there was only one of each of them. The other twelve or so rides in the park were kind of "filler." It was much more the kind of stuff you'd find at the state fair. I think you know what I'm talking about - the "haunted house" that involves a cart on a squeaky track and is only really scary because you never know if you'll get to see your parents again once the cart goes behind the beaded veil where you might or might not be abducted by a transient and forced to do awful, illegal child labor jobs on the really tall parts of the Ferris wheel while an obese chain smoker holds a diet of stale peanuts over your head or the "centrifuge" that kind of makes you want to vomit and most definitely keeps your mouth plastered to the side of your face long enough for uncontrollable drool to crystallize along your jaw line. I won't even bore you with the details of "Prospect Street" and "The Hopeful Kids Gang." Also, in another turn that I've never fully understood, Visionland was mostly staffed by visiting students from Iceland and other very cold, very dark European nations. It's rather strange to wander through a park and notice that the name tags on the staff either say, "Hi, I'm Emily from Gardendale" or "Hi, I'm Lars from Reykjavik." I can only imagine that something went very wrong in state/international politics and there's large debt and/or lax visa standards at stake. Anyway, when the amusement park opened, my friend got us advance tickets so we could go to the park the night before it opened, and, of course, we invited boys along. Now, as a Southern teenage girl, I always had high hopes for "the amusement park date." It probably had to do with the fact that I grew up on too much Lifetime and "General Hospital," but I couldn't help being a little giddy about the possibility of hand holding, snuggling up next to one another on the roller coaster, him winning me a stuffed animal while I ate cotton candy in an oh-so-delicate-and-playful way... Well, about the only part of that fantasy that happened was the hand holding (but, later, after we had left Visionland and there were fewer people to see us/cause him infinite embarrassment), but, as we were leaving the park, I kind of fell onto Richard Townsend. (As we all know, I'm just a klutz. I tripped on the sidewalk, and Robert Townsend helped me catch myself. At the time, it probably would have been best to ask why my boyfriend didn't bother to help me out, and maybe I could have salvaged the next three years of my dating life, but, bygones...) I said hi. (After all, I had seen "Meteor Man" and was a regular viewer of "The Parent 'Hood.") He said hi back. After he walked away, I looked at my friends and said, "Wow, that was Robert Townsend." That is also the moment when all of my friends just stared at me before Leah finally said, "Yeah...We don't know who that is," and we all went on with our lives. My brushes with fame really are quite amazing, aren't they?