It’s been a mere four weeks since my last “Adventures” installment, but something terrible occurred within the past couple of weeks that prompted me to recall a frighteningly similar story.  I had all but forgotten this particular evening in my life until I heard about a nearly identical situation which ended far more tragically than my own.  All I lost was my hat.

Once again we return to the tumultuous days of my youth, this time, as several others, around my sixteenth year.  During that summer, I had attended a local fair and purchased a baseball hat with an insignia on the front that summed up my outlook on life pretty well.  It was a black hat with a lovely embroidered marijuana leaf prominently displayed in the front with the words “Light Up & Live” directly beneath.  Since, for reasons lost to wisdom, I felt it was important to let everyone know where I stood on the subject of marijuana use, I wore that hat everywhere, every day.

Once or twice per summer, the crew I hung with would take a trip to the famed Canobie Lake Park in Salem, NH, for a night of fun under the colorful lights of this local amusement park.  On the night in question, I was with Mike, Mack and Danny, three “boyz from da hood”.  My black, pot-leaf-adorned political statement sat squarely upon my head.

The four of us were close, all having grown up together.  We had a great time riding the rides, playing the games and, since Mike paid for it, he and I even sat for one of those old-fashioned sepia-toned photos.  In fact, I still have it tucked away in an old photo album.  Done up in the garb of the day, we’re sitting at a table playing poker, each of us with a hand on our gun, doing our best to look menacing.  This was taken just before the “roller coaster wrestling incident”.

Canobie Lake Park isn’t New Hampshire’s answer to Six Flags – not by a long shot.  Even today, the park is relatively small with very few “extreme rides”.  Back in the day, the best ride at Canobie was, by far, the wooden roller coaster known as the Yankee Cannonball.  The old Cannonball wasn’t, and still isn’t, very high (maybe 100 feet on a good day) and isn’t very long (maybe a minute’s ride including the pull up the initial hill), so after a couple of rides on it, it starts to lose its thrill.

On our umpteenth trip up the first hill, and in a misguided effort to make things a bit more fun, I decided to slap Mack, who was sitting in front of Mike and I, on the head.  He, of course, spun around and returned the favor.  As the crest of the hill approached, I whacked him again, expecting that he wouldn’t retaliate since we were just about going over the top now.  I was wrong, and Mack turned to face me just as the coaster started its downward trek.  A slapfight of sorts ensued as the coaster flew down one hill and up another, then down and up again.  We were both still belted in, so the thought of falling out of the ride never really crossed my mind – but neither did the fact that I was still wearing my hat.

As we quickly rolled down the third hill, Mack, with a flick of his wrist, deftly removed the hat from my head.  Off it sailed into the darkness.  As soon as it happened, I realized my mistake and began cursing Mack and all his ancestors.  The reality, though, was that I had started it all by hitting him in the first place, so in reality there was little I could complain about.  Mack, Danny and Mike all thought the turn of events was quite hilarious and though I didn’t share in their fits of laughter, I really wasn’t too upset.  I just figured that when we left, I’d just jump the fence that surrounds the coaster, find my hat, and be happily on my way.

We chose to leave the park a little before closing since Mike wanted to beat the traffic and we all wanted to get stoned (hard to do in the park itself).  Before finding the car, we all walked to the chain link fence at the edge of the parking lot – the one that surrounds the Yankee Cannonball.  It was only eight feet tall and had no barbed wire on the top, so I easily scaled the fence and was surprised to see Mack follow me over.  We walked under the coaster and over to the area where we felt the hat may be.  We searched the grass under and around the coaster for nearly ten minutes, but simply could not locate the black baseball cap in the shadows.  The roller coaster itself was still running while we searched and screamed past us at least twice while we mulled around beneath it.  It was loud, exciting and ridiculously stupid of us to be there in the first place.

Mack and I are very fortunate to have walked away unscathed, both from the screwing around on the coaster and under it.   A 17-year-old from South Carolina named Asia Leeshawn Ferguson was not so lucky.  The young man was decapitated by a “Batman” roller coaster in Georgia last month.  Reports tell that he was with at least one friend when he jumped not one, but two fences to enter a restricted area beneath the coaster in an effort to retrieve a hat that had come off earlier in the day.

There, but for the grace of God, go I.