Splash Landing

“Humans love getting splashed with water by other humans.” I casually observed aloud while standing on the side of the LegoLand’s Splash Battle Ride in Carlsbad, California.

In this ride, up to 4 people sit in a boat following along on a track through a curvy shallow river. Each rider has control of a water cannon with a stream of steady water flowing through in front of them, that can move up, down and side to side.

The point of the ride is to shoot other passing by ships carrying other riders.

But…the ride has a bit of a surprise for unknowing passengers onboard the ships. Outside along the border of the ride there are more water cannon’s where people walking past can also shoot the players.

While we were standing there, awaiting my nephews to go through the line to get on….I watched small children run from blaster to blaster to spray the passing by ships.

During some slow moments, the children became bored and moved on, walking away. It was at these moments, when I noticed the adults standing around, would eagerly walk up to the water cannons.

One woman in particular I paid close attention to. She reminded me of a grandma with her short blonde hair and fine lines along her mouth.

At first, she came up slowly and cautiously while walking up to the blaster.

“How does this work?” she asked me.

“Just grab the handles with both hands and start shooting” I replied back by showing her.

I stepped back and watched her go. She began by aiming the cannon in different directions and quickly became comfortable in how it operated.

As the ships came near her post, smaller children once again began running around from cannon to cannon. She held her ground and continued to stay in her spot. As riders came floating past her, she joyously began to point her water stream at them. She seemed to especially enjoy shooting the other adults that were in the boats with their kids.

It’s a weird moment, to be in LegoLand near the end of this pandemic. While everyone who entered the park had to be vaccinated, we all still had to wear the masks. This meant that I wasn’t able to see people’s reactions and smiles at the LegoLand attractions.

However, during that splash battles, just by the rider’s body language, I could tell everyone had huge fun smiles under their masks.

One moment in particular made me reflect on the goodness of humans. The older women, shot a man in face, who at first had no idea she was there. It surprised him and he turned towards her splashing her with his gun. She laughed and backed up to get out of the splash zone of his stream.

“You got me good!” he gleefully yelled from the ride. She gave him a thumbs up with delight and excitedly walked back to her post to splash more riders.

It was at this moment that I realized how playful and fun humans are. Even humans who are complete strangers….can make each other laugh and connect.

Human nature is amazing.

Sometimes, we can get caught up in the news meant to shock us.

We get caught up in movies or Dateline episodes that will have you believing we are all out to kill each other.

But, if you stop and just look around, you’ll notice the inner child in all of us does come out.

And when it does, its completely beautiful.

This was in response to the KTHT, June 14th, prompt: