The Wave That Never Ends

Some Sundays you stay in and build a tower out of blocks. And some Sundays you put on swim shorts, walk into a building where it is always summer, and find out that a wave can go on forever if you build it the right way.

This one was the second kind. We spent the day at the Kalahari indoor waterpark in Round Rock, Texas, which from a five year old's point of view is less a building and more a weather system: warm, loud, and slightly damp in every direction.

First, the Serengeti Spinner

We started with the Serengeti Spinner, and we rode it the proper way, which is to say on a two person tube with Dad. Aadi picked the front. He always picks the front.

There is a particular quiet that happens at the top of a slide, after the attendant lines the tube up and before they let go. Aadi filled it with a running commentary about how he was definitely ready. Then the floor tilted away.

What happened next, I am reporting accurately and against my own interests. I shut my eyes and screamed the whole way down. Not a dignified noise either. The full thing, all the way to the splash at the bottom.

Aadi, sitting in front of me, kept his eyes slightly open the entire time. He did not shut them. He did not hold on especially hard. He made no sound at all. He just leaned back and let the slide happen to him.

I asked him afterwards whether he had been scared. He looked at me with the patience of someone explaining something very obvious to a slow adult, and said no, he was relaxed. He was chilling. On a water slide. At speed.

I called him calm in his birthday card a couple of weeks ago. I had not realised I was writing down a technical specification.

The best part, according to the expert in the front seat, is the spinning. Aadi called it "the spinny part", declared it the best thing in the building, and requested it four more times. We did it four more times. I screamed four more times. He kept his eyes slightly open four more times.

Then, a wave that does not go anywhere

The FlowRider stopped him in his tracks, and to be fair it is a strange thing to see for the first time. A slide moves you. This does the opposite.

Aadi watched a few older kids go first, which is very unlike him, and asked the question I have come to recognise as the sound of him working something out: "but where does the water go?"

Bodyboarding, for the very first time

Then came the part of the day he will remember. Bodyboarding on the FlowRider means you lie or kneel on a bodyboard and ride the wave, and it carries a 42 inch minimum height.

He measured. He qualified. I have rarely seen a person so pleased to be exactly tall enough for something.

The first go lasted about a second and a half. He came off sideways, surfaced with his hair completely over his eyes, and was already asking to go again before he had finished coughing. The second go was longer. By the fourth he had worked out that you do not fight the water, you lean into it, which is a lesson that took me considerably longer than four tries to learn about anything.

He never quite got up onto his knees. He did not seem to mind. On the walk back he explained to me, with total confidence, that the trick is "you have to be heavy at the front", and honestly, he may be right.

And twice around the lazy river

We did the lazy river twice. Once in the middle of the day, and once right at the end, because Aadi decided that was how the day was going to finish and there was no arguing with him about it.

Here is the thing nobody warns you about a lazy river. It is only lazy if everyone in your group has agreed to be lazy. Aadi had not agreed. Aadi wanted to go fast, and he wanted to get splashed, and the river on its own was not going to deliver either one.

So I ran. Through water. Pushing a tube. Twice around. I would like to report that the current helped, but the current is called lazy for a reason, and it did not.

Aadi rode in front doing none of the work whatsoever, getting soaked, shouting for more speed, and having what I can only describe as the time of his life. I got my steps in.

The second lap was the last thing we did all day. He asked to go round again as we were getting out, which I have decided to take as a review.

What he took home

A slightly chlorinated smell that survived two washes. A wristband he refused to take off until Tuesday. And the particular kind of confidence a kid gets from being bad at something four times in a row and then slightly less bad on the fifth.

Most of what he loves already involves things that move: rockets, cranes, an oil pump jack with an arm that nods. This was the first time he was the thing that moved. He has asked twice since whether we can go back.

We can go back.