What do Water Rides, Disembodied Cow Tongues and the Lady of Shalott Have in Common?
My mother is terrified of thrill rides. She is also unfortunate enough to have me as a son; I adore thrill rides. Year after year, even though she herself hates them, my mother has allowed our family to take summer trips to various amusement parks. While my brother and I sought out the thrills on these trips, my mother would always prefer to sit in a shaded area and read her books as she waited for us. Until this year. This past summer, our park of choice was Cedar Point in Ohio. Near the end of the day, my brother and I asked our mother to come on a ride with us so we all three of us could have done that one thing together as a family. The ride we had in mind was a log-flume ride. It dropped riders from an elevated height into a raging flume; no one who rode it could avoid being totally soaked. My mom said she was too scared of the steep drop to go on the ride. I saw that she would not change her mind and turned, somewhat disappointed, to get in line for the ride with my brother. My b
