Frankly, amusement parks don’t give me much amusement. I can see all the happy people running around, sprinting back to the end of the line to ride the same rides over and over again, but like Steve Butabi told his brother Doug in “A Night at the Roxbury”:

I can’t taste it, Doug! I can’t! I’m so scared right now I don’t know what to do!

Of course, I never say that out loud. That’s just something I tell myself when I’m leaning against a wall somewhere, guarding everybody’s bags, clothes, cameras, while updating my Facebook status, looking as cool as I possibly can.

I don’t like the rides that just spin, fast. I don’t like any of the rides where I don’t actually drive the thing, where I’m just a passenger. But I do kind of like a good, old-fashioned rollercoaster – if I pretend I’m driving it.

But love can make you do silly things. Love, and the stupid macho need to impress the girl you’re falling for. Maybe mostly the stupid macho need to impress. Love then sets you free. It’s love that lets me guard all the bags.

The first summer I was dating Wife, she took me to Gröna Lund, the Stockholm amusement park. An annual tradition of hers, she wanted to bring me in to it, too. I’d told her that I don’t really like amusement parks, but I had also told her that I couldn’t swim, and she had seen me float, so maybe she just thought I was an overachieving type who always sets the bar high.

The biggest – and baddest – attraction of Gröna Lund at the time was Fritt Fall, the Free Fall, where they strap you into a seat, hike you slowly up to about 80 meters, and then drop you down at about 100 kilometers an hour.

And when I say “you”, I wish it were you.

But after all the games, the lotteries, the fun house, the merry-go-round, and the love tunnel, Wife wanted to do Free Fall. And Sister-in-law wanted to do it. And suddenly I heard a macho man voice say that I also wanted to do it.

And I did it.

I had no idea how high 80 meters really is. I could see all the way to Finland. And I had no idea how long a time three seconds is. But now I can tell you that it feels like a lifetime, and you can scream your lungs out three times on your way down.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH! [Inhale] AAAAAAAAAAAAARGH!!! [Inhale] AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH!

Maybe nobody could hear me scream in space, but Wife and her sister surely did hear me. Apparently, the macho man stayed on the ground.

And it’s hard to play cool after that. Sister-in-law ran back to the end of the line to do it all over again. I stayed on the ground with the bags.

Oddly, though, later that same summer, Wife managed to talk me into going back to an amusement park. We had been on a road trip across America, driving from New York to Atlanta to Vegas to Oregon to LA, and she wanted to go to Six Flags, Magic Mountain.

For her, a road trip invoked memories of stopping at various amusement parks and riding roller coasters with loops with her other sister. And while the Goliath didn’t have loops – I don’t think – its opening drop was, at the time, the longest and fastest (135 km/h) on a closed-circuit roller coaster in the world.

Well, just the name, “Goliath” says it all. It was huge, and the drop was even bigger. As a side note, let the record show that the drop is officially about 60 meters, even though Wife refers to it as a 80-meter drop – as recently as last week. But she is her father’s daughter, and her sister’s, um, sister, and they’re not embarrassed to embellish a story to make it even better. Sister-in-law has told amazing and colorful stories about her adventures, even though she wasn’t really there when the events unfolded, but instead, heard it all from a friend.

Anyway, there I stood in line with Wife, wrestling with myself whether to get onboard Goliath or not. Unfortunately, the line was about an hour long, so I went back and forth about a dozen times. Looking up at Goliath, then at Wife, then Goliath again. Thinking I could do it, then that I would die. Then looking at Wife, thinking I could do it.

And then we came to the gate. The car was waiting for me, Wife had jumped in – and I turned around and walked back out. The loser walk. The walk of shame. It went alongside the line going in, so I couldn’t even slip out through the back door, but had to face all the people standing in line.

Hopefully, my walking out gave some other quitter the courage to walk out.

After Free Fall, I had told Wife that yes, it was scary, but that I could probably even like doing it in reverse instead: to get shot up. Little did I know that two years later, we’d move to Helsinki, and that the local “amusement” park had just one of those rides. The ones where you get strapped into a seat at ground level, and then get shot up to 75 meters.

“I’m too stupid to realize what’s going to happen, so that’ll suit me just fine,” I said.

And I did it. Once.

Good news: I wasn’t as stupid as I thought.

Last weekend, we went to another amusement park in Finland. By now, both Wife and I know our roles. She rides the big ones, alone, and the fast childen’s rides with the kids, I go to the fun houses, and the dark rides, and the house of mirrors.

It’s been easy because the kids haven’t been big enough to get to ride the really big ones. This year, Son got to ride one of those big Chair-O-Planes, the swing carousels, and he loved it. Wife and I stood on the ground, looking up, watching our little boy fly high above our heads, waving to us with his feet, because he had to hold on to the swing with his hands.

But he loved it.

He loved it so much that I decided I would ride it with him.

“Was it scary?” I asked.

“No, it was fun, just a little scary, but I have a good trick for that. I sang “Olamababa just a sweet Caramaba”, he said, referring to a song that is also known as “Get On”, by Hurriganes.

“Great,” I said, as we ran to the end of the line.

Son took a seat in the inner circle, I grabbed the seat next to him, and fastened my seat belt. I felt good, swinging my feet in the cool air, looking at Son, who was about to burst out of excitement.

“Get reeeeeeady!” said the kid responsible for the ride.

And off we went, ‘round and ‘round, and ‘round and ‘round, and higher and higher, and higher and higher, and higher, and my swing started to go farther and farther away from the center, and that’s when I heard from the seat next to me, “And like a rubber ball, I come bouncin’ back to you rubber ball,” in a young boy’s light voice.

I replied with “Well, old Alabama, just a sweet Carolina, just a-rockin’ and rollin’ may leave town, got to be a scoogie, lay on my boogie…” and felt my swing go higher and higher, and higher and higher, and I was sure that in just a few seconds like a rubber ball I’d be bouncing off the concrete below me, and I sang some more, and I closed my eyes, and I sang, and I opened my eyes, and I tried to see Wife somewhere but couldn’t, and I told myself that the ride probably only lasts a couple of minutes and that we must have been at least halfway through, and that it was a good thing Son was behind me.

A minute later, everything slowed down, and I got my feet back on the ground. I wanted to kiss the ground like the old Pope used to do, but instead, just grabbed my shoes and walked through the exit with Son.

“You looked a little tense up there,” Wife said as Son ran back to the end of the line.

I took the backpack and said I was fine. But that I was a little thirsty.