The Adventures of "That Guy" - Day 3

Ok, I know. Day 3 of my vacation was 5 days ago.
But I know you're just dying to hear about the rest of the trip, so I figured I should finish telling these tales.

And this one is one of the more memorable tales from our trip.

In life, every man faces challenges.
When given the opportunity, are you going to try to ride a bull named "Fu Man Chu"?
When standing at the top of a cliff over a body of water, are you going to have the guts to dive?
And when you face a water slide a grand as this one, are you going to have what it takes to give it a shot?

Quite a scary slide, I know.

One of the things I love about being a father is playing the role of Superdad. Some dads may be the type that would sit by the pool reading a book and say "You boys go play. Have fun." I'm not that guy. I try to play with them as much as possible. I try to introduce new games or fun ideas to them. This year one of my bright ideas was to play with them in the kiddie waterpark. There was a sign that said "You must be under 14 to play in the water park." but there was also a sign that said this...

Is that last line not common knowledge?

so I didn't really trust their judgement in what signs they posted.and chose to ignore their age limit advice.

The waterpark was like a splashpad with a couple of slides. I slid down the red slide beside Ethan, racing him to the bottom. Of course I left him in my dust. He didn't have a chance of winning against my speed and agility.

Ethan enjoying the red slide.

But things didn't go quite as smooth when I followed him down the blue tube slide. As every good slider knows, you can't just sit and push yourself down. If you want to reach maximum sliding velocity you have to grab the bar above the slide and swing yourself down the slide helping you gain momentum before you even hit the slide. Knowing all these great tips, I grabbed the bar.... felt the sea breeze blowing lightly across my face.....pushed back on my heels, ready to charge into the tube slide...lifted my feet and used every bit of upper body strength I have to force myself into a fast swing into the tube....saw the top of the tunnel and realized I might crash my head into it and slightly lowered my body to avoid such a collision.... then the tradgedy happened. I felt a shocking thud as my tailbone crashed into the bottom of the slide. Somehow I had overcompensated trying to miss the top of the tube and instead used all my strength to force myself down onto my tailbone instead of into the slide.
It was painful to say the least.
As I slid down the slide in a semi-fetal position, I knew the pain I was feeling wasn't going to go away quickly.
I was right.

I have either bruised or broken my tailbone. As I write this, now 5 days later I am still hurting. I feel fine standing or seated, but moving from one position to the other is not fun.

Thankfully, this injury didn't ruin the trip
It did make me uncomfortable at times and I quickly became the butt of every joke (pun intended), but mostly It just gave me yet another reason to laugh at myself.