Grad Night (719 words)
With 90-degree temperatures signaling the onset of Florida’s 5-month summer, high school seniors’ thoughts turn toward that milestone when classes end and they leave school to go to . . . Disney World. Graduating seniors load onto buses and head for “Grad Night” at the Magic Kingdom. The park closes, then re-opens from 10:00 p.m.-4:00 a.m. just for the students. In addition to going on rides, students can hear performances by popular bands.

By the tens of thousands each weekend, students descend on the park. If the Magic Kingdom and Main Street U.S.A. are fantasized idealizations of a simpler past, then Grad Night is another willing conspiracy—a last joyful spasm of childish enthusiasm by youth on the cusp of adulthood.

We loaded the buses to drive to Disney. Nearly everyone had made pre-arrangements about the friends with whom they were going to pass the evening. This was not my forte, but somehow I wound up with a trio of sparkling, handsome girls I had known since junior high. None of us was dating anyone. We were just good friends, and it felt relaxed to be together.

Hopping off the monorail, we raced to the new Space Mountain ride before the lines got too long. We didn’t much mind the 45-minute wait in exchange for the twisting black plunge toward an unknown destination. We knew there was so much more ahead of us. One of the girls, Carol, was a bit queasy from the coaster, but she soon recovered and we sauntered about, taking in other rides and shows.

Carol suggested we go to where the bands were playing so we could dance. A group called Peaches and Herb was performing at 1:30. They had the nation’s #1 hit just then, a sappy faux R&B tune called “Reunited.” The other girls were okay with the idea, but a panic began to grow in me. I could only dance about half as well as Frankenstein, and had suffered grievously during this age of disco. I knew from experience that, once on the dance floor, my three very companionable classmates would be snapped up by boys with rhythm and I would be left in the pixie dust. So, I distracted, delayed, and led us onto wrong turns and long turnstiles for 90 minutes. Finally Carol had had enough. “Listen,” she said, “We want to go dancing and if you don’t want to, you don’t have to.” Further resistance was pointless.

Just a minute later, though, I formed an idea. Like the Grinch’s, it was a “wonderful, awful idea.” I suggested we take in one more ride on the way to the concert—a kiddie ride—the Mad Hatter’s Teacups. You remember it. You sit in a big teacup on a slowly revolving floor under multicolored lights. The girls agreed, and we all squeezed in together. Do you remember one other feature of the Teacup ride? In the cup’s middle is a sort of steering wheel. It’s kind of hard to turn, but a motivated and healthy person can make that cup spin at a very high rate. A rate so high, in fact, that it is stronger than the pull of gravity.

I started turning the wheel, and at first the girls loved it. Then . . . they didn’t. They were pressed back against the cup, and Carol had that queasy look again like after Space Mountain. I turned even faster. Another girl, Julie, tried to reach out and stop me, but the centrifugal force bent her arm backward across her chest like she was pledging the flag. The cup was going so fast I could hardly keep my arms on the wheel. Our lips were curling back over our teeth. Julie tried to say something—“stop” I think—but all that came out were a long “sssssllllaaaaaahhhhh” and a thread of drool that stretched two feet and twinkled decorously under the colored lights above.

Afterward, Carol didn’t feel like dancing anymore. It was just a twist of fate, so to speak, that the other girls had to suffer too.

Epilogue #1: I saw Julie again at our 10-year high school reunion. She walked right over and socked me, then turned to my wife and said, “that’s for what he did to me ten years ago, and I hadn’t even wanted to dance!”

Epilogue #2: Fifteen years after grad night, I returned to Disney with my wife and two young daughters. We went on the Teacup ride, and I discovered that Disney had changed the steering wheel on the Teacup ride so that it was no longer possible to make the cup turn fast, alas.