The Day I Lost Him at the Water Park

It was Day 8 of our vacation and our third day at this particular water park.  As usual, his main love was the wave pool.  He had already spent hours wave hopping when he looked up, peeled off his goggles,  and asked to go to the “Splash Castle”.  This was his name for an immense jungle gym of water spraying and splashing chaos on the other side of the park.

We made a quick plan:  First we would play on the Splash Castle, then we would take a lap in the Lazy River, then back to the wave pool.   Off he sprinted, with me trying to keep up and lifeguards every 100 feet yelling at him to “Walk… don’t run!”

We arrived at the Splash Castle and he melted into the chaos.  Usually, his big sister stays in tow as he navigates the immense maze of nets, walkways, stairs and slides.  She keeps him from cutting the lines and getting beat up by the older kids who sometimes misunderstand his occasional disregard of common courtesy.

This time, however, my daughter and my wife decided to hit a few water slides of their own, leaving me to keep an eye on our little maniac.

He did his thing for a few minutes, running up and down the huge structure, stopping occasionally to splash in the water.  Then he gave me a head fake.

It only took a second, but I lost track of his little legs among the crowd.  I circled the structure, heading toward the general direction I last saw him running.

He wasn’t there.  I circled back, expecting at any second to spot his bright blue and green bathing suit in the crowd.  I didn’t.

The first pang of fear was minor.  It had only been two minutes or so.  He would pop up any second.  After five, seven, ten minutes, the pangs grew more severe.  It took me fifteen minutes of fruitless circling and searching to approach a lifeguard and ask for help.  She was nice enough.  She recognized his description and said she thought he was still playing up on the structure.   She called Security and told me they would send an officer right away.

“Right away” turned into seven more minutes as panic began to settle in.  “Skippy” the Security Guard finally arrived.  I’m sure he was a very capable young college student.  All I saw, however, was a 12-year-old punk kid wearing an over-sized uniform he stole out of his father’s closet.  I went into “cop mode.”

I gave him a detailed description of my son, his swimming abilities and his behaviors.  He wrote down every third detail.  I ordered him to send two more guards to the wave pool:  one to find my wife and daughter and the other to start scouring the water for my son.  I ordered him to find the kill switch for the “Splash Castle” and to start ordering the kids to come down off of it.

I noticed that several parents lounging around the area began to take notice of my plight and nosily listen in, but none felt compelled to pitch in and help.  That pissed me off.

At that point, I realized that “Skippy” was over his head.  His biggest asset to me was his portable radio that could be used to quickly communicate my son’s description.  Beyond that, I was on my own.  I forced myself to keep my head together and keep my composure.  It took all of my strength.

Then I remembered our “plan:”First, Splash Castle, then the Lazy River.”  I ran over to the Lazy River and jumped up on a rock to get the best possible vantage point.  This earned the attention of a young surfer-dude lifeguard that I named, “Spicoli”.  He yelled to me something like, “Dude, you can’t be up there.”