443: Amusement Park

24:10In fact, it's good to lose because people carrying prizes around the park are a walking advertisement for all the games. Cole's journey from summertime employee like Sarah to full-time year-round boss happened in a couple of steps. He said as a kind of nerdy kid in high school in a small town, it was nice to come to a place where his personality was rewarded. I couldn't wait till the summer because when it was summertime, I get to come to World of Fun and work with people that are just like me and enjoy our whole summer together. So after years of that, in his senior year at the University of Kansas at Lawrence, he got a phone call offering him the job of games manager, and he dropped out of school to take it.

24:53It's probably one of the hardest decisions I've ever had to make. But I said, okay, this opportunity is probably only going to come along once in a lifetime. As you'd imagine, it hasn't been such a popular decision with family. So, I mean, I have a full year left. I'm like one full year of college left. It comes up when you least expect it. It comes up when they, like, oh, I know you're working real hard, but when are you getting back to school? or my grandmother. Now before, you know, I pass on. You need to make sure that you've completed college. And my grandma all the time. And I get a lot from the girlfriend too.

25:34When are you going to finish? Because she just graduated college. This girlfriend and Cole were pretty serious. They just moved in together. They met in games back in 2006, though she moved on from games. I get that all the time. She's like, we're not going to be together forever if you don't finish college. I get it a lot. how often will it come up once a week maybe maybe once every two weeks depending on the week I don't know I don't know lots of very accomplished people don't have college degrees I know Steve Jobs yeah but Steve Jobs he changed the world you know I'm just a lowly little games manager in a small mid-sized park in Kansas City

26:22Who wants to play some games? By midday, down in games three, that is Dustin, who's wearing the full-body banana suit that Haley handmade for him, which looks amazing. But it is 94 degrees, which is sapping everybody's energy, and business is slow. Oh, all right. Well, hey, you guys have a great day. Though as the day wears on, people slowly migrate from the rides to the games. and by nightfall, when it cools off, the guys in Games 2 finally get Technoball working. Max and Oksan are covered from head to toe in glow lights. Cole and I round a corner together, and we see them in the distance, and there's a crowd of three dozen people surrounding the game.

27:03It's fantastic. Oh, my goodness. Oh, let's go look at Technoball. Look at this.

27:11It's six of your staff. And two, three other guys all dancing. In a big circle. Yeah, four other guys all dancing in a big circle to techno music. And how many people are actually playing? Zero. Hey, Dominic! Hey, Dom! That's Dominic, the team leader here at Games 2. Oh, look, Dom's all the way embarrassed. Hi, Dom. What's up? How many people are playing the game, Dom? Judging a lot of attention. Yeah, but why aren't we turning that into gameplay? Colt suggests maybe they should dance inside the game instead of on the walkway in front of the game so people would be pulled into play. Dom does not want to do this.

27:51And listen to what a good boss Cole is. He's firm, but he's very nice about it. You're so close. I know. You're so close. Did you see how much attention I just attracted? No, it did. But then you didn't have anybody out here talking to them saying, hey, why aren't you playing the game? I know. I was hoping that they would realize that. No, no, no. They're not going to realize that. You know that. And better than anyone, you should know that. They're not going to just be like, oh. It looks fine. I mean, all the lights. I mean, it's, I'm not going to deny the awesomeness. But I am going to say that no more dance parties.

28:30I really think the dance parties are not going to help you win. I walked down to check on Games 3. It is 1030 at night. Claire has been here for 13 hours since I saw her setting up pyramids of plush before the gates opened to the park. Those pyramids went out raggedy piles, maybe half their original size, which means that they did great. They got lots of people to play. They'd probably given away 500 prizes for wrong guesses. And Claire has had exactly the kind of day that Cole wants for all the kids. Did you have fun today? Yes, I had a lot of fun. I had no idea what time it was until about 20 minutes ago when I checked.

29:05It just didn't occur to me that I needed to check the time. Because it was going by so fast? Yeah. When did you take your first break today? I haven't taken a break. Wow. Yeah, I guess. I'm kind of used to it. This is Claire's third year here. She's 18, going to Missouri State in the fall to study nursing. And she tells me what a lot of kids here tell me. She wouldn't keep coming back to work at Worlds of Fun, if not for Cole. Definitely not. I don't think any other boss would do the rally days, the death match, the Sweet 16, the Toss the Boss, just all the fun stuff that we do that keeps us going through the season and just keeps this job exciting every day.

29:45Sam, one of the leaders for Games 4, has been here for three summers, and he also says that Cole is the reason that he keeps coming back. Honestly, no one else could do a better job. He was made to do this. It's funny, like, watching him do something like sing a goofy song for you guys in the morning. You can imagine high school students and college students sort of rolling their eyes at somebody doing that, but nobody does. No, it's weird. It's almost like that's the thing to do. Whatever Cole does is the thing to be doing at that moment. And we just all feel like that was the right move. Do you remember what it was like the first time you saw one of his videos?

30:23I do. I remember seeing it and I was like, that's my boss. And he just made that video. And it was so cool because I went and even showed some of my friends. They're all like, who's this guy? He's like, that's my boss. That's so weird because a lot of people would say, well, it's an amusement park. You know, you're great at working at an amusement park. That doesn't mean, by the way, that he is seen by his bosses as some kind of superstar. He gets respect, sure. Everybody likes him. His immediate boss, Matt, thinks that there is nobody better at games in any of the 11 amusement parks owned by their parent company, Cedar Fair.

30:59But Cole is working at one of the smallest of the 11 parks. So other games managers at bigger parks bring in way more money than Cole does. And games, in the grand scheme of things, is actually the smallest revenue producer at most amusement parks. The biggest money at an amusement park comes from ticket sales. Then there's food. Everybody buys food. Then merch. And then, bringing up the rear, is games. What Cole does has less effect on the company's bottom line than lots of people in the company. And as much as Cole loves this job, he cannot but wonder, how long can a person do this job? So the one thing that I always say is, I mean, I'm 25 now.

31:39I started here when I was 14. And the weird thing is, is that I'm getting older, but everybody else in the department staying the same age. All right, I'm going to stop the tape right there. Yes, I know. Matthew McConaughey, dazed and confused. Cole's seen the film too. But the thing I'm wondering for you is, Do you feel like somehow accidentally in this job you got stuck in high school? You got stuck at 15. Like there's a part of you where you're still back there. I like working out in the park with the kids. Absolutely. 100%. The goofball part. The goofball part. The part where you get to act their age instead of your age.

32:22Yes. Does that make me sound bad? I mean, I'm still a manager. I'm still overseeing 100 people that work for me, you know. But at the same time, you know, 10 years from now, I mean, I don't think I can still be a goofball. I think that just kind of get creepy. You know? I mean, you're 35 and you work with a bunch of high schoolers and again, is that creepy? Maybe. Maybe not. I don't know. Do you worry that you'll never be happier in any job than you are in this one? Yes. Absolutely. That's a weird fate to know that you're in the best job you may ever have at 25. Especially when it's a job that you know in your heart it can't last.

33:19Okay, so we first broadcast that story long ago, back in 2011. And so much has happened for Cole since then. He finally did leave his job at Worlds of Fun. That was years ago. And then worked for a while in sales at a toy company. Gave some motivational talks about being a boss in an amusement park. He got married, very happily. Not to the girlfriend in the story, by the way. Now he has a six-year-old daughter who has the same roller coaster amusement park bug that he has. They ride roller coasters together when they go on vacation. He is still putting himself on stage in different ways. In 2024, he won the U.S.

33:55Air Guitar National Championship. And yes, who knew there was such a thing? He went on to Finland for the international competition where he placed fifth in the world as an air guitarist. He's competing there again in two weeks for the world championship. These days he's also writing music, he's performing, he's going on auditions. He turned 40 this year. Says that he has had jobs that were satisfying in ways that the amusement park job never was. But he said so far, it's still the best job he ever had. Well, coming up, carneys float in the air. Scary things happen on rides. And bold steps forward for paintball targets everywhere.

34:35Our hour of amusement parks continues in a minute. from Chicago Public Radio when our program continues. Support for This American Life and the following message come from Squarespace. Squarespace gives you everything you need to offer services and get paid all in one place. Whether you're doing consultations or experiences, showcase what you're offering with a customizable website designed to attract clients and grow your business. You can raise support for your cause by fundraising directly on your website with built-in donation tools. Visit squarespace.com slash American to get 10 % off your first purchase of a website or domain.

35:36about why people do the things they do. Download the latest episode and subscribe at schwab.com slash podcast or wherever you listen. Support for This American Life and the following message come from Southern New Hampshire University, a nonprofit provider of online education. SNHU students are a lot like you. Parents, professionals with big career plans, busy people balancing life's many responsibilities. And SNHU students do all of that while earning their degrees. Because with no set class times, online tuition that's less than its peers and dedicated student support, Southern New Hampshire University makes going back to school possible.

36:11Get started at snhu.edu slash American. This American Life, Amara Glass, each week on our show, of course, we choose a theme, bring you different kinds of stories on that theme. Today's show, amusement parks. It's August. It's hot. We wanted to go someplace fun here on the radio. We've arrived at Act II of our program, Act II, Great Adventures. Well, we asked you, our listeners, to call in with your amusement park stories. Nearly 300 of you did. And one of our producers, Jane Marie, listened to all of those voicemail messages. She joins me now. Hey, Jane. Hey. So, Jane, trends, patterns, what can you tell me?

36:47Carnies. Oh. Yeah. There's like creepy carnies and hot carnies and carnies that people married. And a bunch of people called and told stories about carnies, like making the ride go too fast or keeping them on the ride too long. Demonic carnies. Yeah. These two calls that I'm going to play are from Barry Silver and Penny Delaney Coffrin. And they had the same exact, like, crazy Kearney story, only they happened years apart and in different cities. But it's fun to imagine they're talking about the same guy. My amusement park story involves the Gravitron. Yeah, oh, let me interrupt real quick, because the Gravitron, that was, like, the most popular ride people talked about in the phone calls.

37:27Huh. That's the one where it's a cylinder, and you climb in it, and you put your back up against the inside wall of the cylinder. Right, and it spins around and the floor drops out. Yep, and you're like stuck to the wall. There was a carny there, and he was waving us all in, and we had purchased tickets, and I guess our first sign that this was going to be an interesting ride was when he said no to the tickets we offered him and just kind of waved us in. I was working for the World of Wonder Sideshow last month. I had made friends with the carny who was running the Gravitron. He started up the ride, and the music was blaring, and I remember it was Motley Crue's Dr.

38:05Feelgood. Anyway, he gave me a private showing where I'm riding inside this thing. The music's blasting. And the lights were going, and we were spinning around, and the centrifugal force was pushing us up against the wall. And the next thing I know, this carny steps out from behind his operating box and comes out into the centrifuge and proceeds to pull himself up and place his feet on the spinning wall and walk over the rider step by step with his body completely horizontal to the earth. He's standing on the wall next to me, surfing inside of the Gravitron. This race, the ride operator, left the control panel to start surfing the inside, parallel to the ground.

38:52The force was holding his feet against the wall, and it was just the most amazing thing I'd ever seen. Best experience of my life.

39:08so i know uh because because you told me right before we sat down that a lot of the stories that people caught in to tell were love stories tons of love stories or like like stories you know like summer flings summer romances first kisses um there were people that lost their virginity on rides. Ew. Don't do that. But then there were the proposals. There were a lot of people proposing at amusement parks, some more successfully than others. My name is Natasha, and in May, my boyfriend proposed to me on a roller coaster. We were on a Viper. He said, will you marry me? And he popped open the ring box, and the ring fell out of the box and down into the pits of Viper.

40:00It was pretty awful. I started trying to get the right operator to stop the car. The director of operations at the park assembled a team of about 20 people and they searched for the ring for hours and that happened in May. So the kicker here is that that ring was actually my grandmother's ring and they're actually still searching for it. we have yet to find it.

40:35So I called Natasha actually to see if they'd found it yet. And she said that the park had called her recently and said they found a ring, but it wasn't hers. It was another engagement ring. Really? Yep. Well, it's good to know that her fiancé wasn't the only dummy. Right. And then we got a bunch of scary calls. So this is a scary one. Wendy in Austin, Texas, she and her friend went to the fair and they were getting on a roller coaster. It was like one of those medium sized fair roller coasters where there's one big drop and then a loop de loop. And but as she was getting on, she was like futzing around with her purse.

41:09I reached up to pull the harness down over me and it locked above my head and I have nothing holding me into the roller coaster. So I look over in horror as the carny guy that was running the ride looks at me and he pushes the button to go and the thing starts to go. And I'm telling him, wait, wait, wait, stop, stop. I don't have my seatbelt on. But he doesn't stop. I know. So now she's like going up the hill. So she said she turned to her friend and she just decided to wrap her arms and legs around her friend. I know. No, and so they go down the hill, and then they go through the loop-de-loop.

41:54So she's upside down? I know, just like hanging under her friend. As tight as I can to stay inside the ride. And what really got scary is we whipped around the corners. I almost got thrown out, but I didn't. She said that she had whiplash for a week and that she was too young to realize that she probably could have sued them. So there's another story from this woman, Susan. And her three-year-old wanted to go to the fair, but it was super late at night. And so they humored him and they're like, sure, we'll take you. But they figured he would fall asleep on the way there. But he didn't. He stayed awake.

42:29So I said, OK, I'll take you in for one ride on the Ferris wheel and then we'll go back to the car. My husband, Dean, put his shoes on because we didn't think he'd make it there. So we took him to the Ferris wheel and he kept pointing to the scrambler saying that he wanted to go on the scrambler. And I said, no, no, no. And when we got off the ride, I held the chain for the person behind me to come out. And when I turned back around, he was gone. We could not find him anywhere. And as we're looking around, and we have a whole group looking for this little three-year-old boy, I looked up, and he was inside the gate of the scrambler.

43:08And the scrambler was going. his head was just at the car level and the carny woman stopped the ride and she stopped it in time she walked over picked him up handed him to me she didn't say a word and I took him and he said she was really scary and I said that woman was an angel and so I will never bad mouth a carny again I'm glad we finally have some unequivocally pro-carny material in this story. Me too. Hi, my amusement park story takes place in Disneyland. And I was really excited to go on the haunted house ride. I forget what it's called. Anyways, the door opens and you are let into a room.

44:03And the door opens and it's a dark, empty room. and there is a person, a little person, who was in the room already, and I thought it was part of the haunted house. So I started screaming, and he was looking at me, because I was screaming, he was screaming at me. We were both screaming at each other. And then we both realized that it was not part of the haunted house and that we were just waiting in line with each other. and we pretended like nothing happened.

44:45And finally, there were the puke stories. Oh, a lot of people caught about puke. And is the story more than just I was on a ride and I puked? Yeah, it's I was on a ride and I puked or I was on a ride and I got puked on. Well, I don't want to hear that. Was there anything that had like a twist? Was it a surprise plot twist? The one that stands out for me is this lady was on that ocean motion ride, you know, that's like a big boat that swings back and forth. It basically just goes up and down. Yeah, just swings. It's like a pendulum. And so she was up at the highest part of the boat and she saw the guy on the other end of the boat start puking.

45:18And so then she was like swinging down at the puke. Oh, no. And did she see the puke in midair? Yeah, like slow motion. Coming towards her. I could see in slow motion this line of vomit coming towards me. And it hit her? Yeah. Oh! About two seconds later, it splattered the entire right side of my body. There's nowhere to go. You can't get off the boat.

45:50Jay Marie, she used to be a producer here these days. She is the host of the podcast, The Dream. She has a book based on that show called Selling the Dream. But those are about large-scale, quintessentially American scams and the people who get caught up in them. Which brings us to Act 3. Act 3, what I didn't do on my summer vacation. You know, sometimes somebody ends up in an amusement park who really has no business there at all. Who is not built to thrill at the thrills that the amusement park offers. As a teenager, Jonathan Goldstein spent a summer working at an amusement park, one that was situated right on the beach in Wildwood, New Jersey.

46:26It is your typical amusement park on the beach. There's a boardwalk, three wooden piers with roller coasters and a Ferris wheel and lots of dropped popcorn and hot dog buns for the seagulls to eat. It's been decades since Jonathan went to work at Wildwood, and he always wanted to go back, and so we sent him, along with one of our producers, Jonathan Manjivar. A quick note to listeners, this story has nothing explicit in it, but it does make reference to the existence of sex. as does this warning. The smell of garbage is really bringing it all back in a rush. Maybe I could bring back a bag with some saltwater toffee.

47:04After a whole religious rebirth that I won't go into here, the summer of my 16th year found me seriously considering yeshiva, rabbinical school, for the fall. My rabbi suggested I spend the summer at this religious camp just to give me a better idea of what was to come. But my best friend Evan said that summer camp was for suckers, and religious camp was even worse, and that if I came with him to Wildwood, he'd personally make sure I had a good time. I'll get you eld really good, he wrote, like a blood oath in my 1986 high school yearbook. That's eld as in the letter L. And getting eld seemed important, especially if I was going to be giving my life over to the Torah, a text that placed greater emphasis on getting seed, as in circumcised.

47:50And so, I went to Wildwood. And now I was back. How close did you live to the pier? Um, I mean, as you've seen getting here, my sense of direction isn't my forte. Um, man, it's like the whole summer I was just, like, floating around in, like, a jar of formaldehyde.

48:16The plan was to go down and get jobs. It was what a lot of teenagers in my town did. Evan's older brother had done it years earlier and had arranged a job for Evan, handing out darts to patsies eager to pop balloons on the boardwalk, and I was supposed to get a job too. But on our fourth night there, still without work, I sat on the edge of my bed and felt that sense of being a failure. This feeling would eventually become a staple in my life, something I'd grow comfortable with, in bars, gyms, offices, and bedrooms. But just then the feeling was strange and new, and I didn't quite know what to do with it.

48:54We lived in a co-ed boarding house run by a woman with a face like a clenched fist named Mrs. D. I spent my days hanging out at Evan's balloon stand, where his boss finally became so tired of having me around that he pulled some strings to get me a job working as a change boy at an arcade. If you walk down the boardwalk, there was a point where it looked like the fun had come to an end. My arcade was just a few yards past that. Do you remember where on the pier you were? That's what I'm thinking. I'm trying to, like, I think, I mean, if anything, maybe that little shack right over there was the arcade where there's a roller coaster going over it now.

49:34It's sort of like the little house that Albie Singer grew up in, in Annie Hall. You've still got pizza parlors, games with unwinnable prizes, and the vague threat of violence about to erupt. In other words, Wildwood hadn't changed much. Back then, everything looked like 1986. Now, 1987. Though, as it turns out, the arcade I worked at is long gone. Even at the time, all the other arcades were carpeted and air-conditioned, but mine was like an outhouse with all the oldest, skankiest games, all their joysticks having had the joy jerked right out of them years earlier. On the 4th of July, I remember watching the fireworks through a little crack in the wall, right above the Donkey Kong machine.

50:19I felt like a young Tony Montana just having come to America, except the only person I wanted to kill was myself.

50:32Being a human change machine is just one of the jobs that seems only to exist on the boardwalk. Like the guy who's paid to dance in front of the t-shirt shop to draw customers. Or the girl who blows bubbles all day outside a souvenir store. Yes, that's my job. I take money from them. That's your whole job, is just blowing bubbles? Not only. And shine with laser. Shine a laser in people's eyes? No. No, of course. The bubble girl tells me she is from Bulgaria. The Bulgarian bubble girl is very young-looking, like first time away from home young. And as she explains to me her work responsibilities, she is approached by a man who turns out to be her boss.

51:16He plants a big kiss on her cheek, as though marking his territory. Is it a good summer? It's all right. It's all right. This boardwalk's getting bad. At nighttime, this boardwalk is bad. Bad fights? People stabbing people and shooting people, yeah. You go two blocks off the boardwalk, there was a shooting and stabbing the other day. Oh, yeah. It's worse under the boardwalk. What goes on under the boardwalk? Oh, sex and drugs. I park underneath my store, and you can see underneath it here, and you catch them all the time down under there. They go right down them steps and right underneath the boardwalk.

51:54Wow. Just text under the boardwalk. Cool. Me and you. Yeah, you wanna do it? No.

52:05Yep, alright. See you later.

52:10Oh boy. That was creepy.

52:20My old boss, Mike, was creepy too. Mike always wore sunglasses and a red, skin-tight bathing suit that, for some reason I could never quite fathom, always appeared to be wet. My friend Evan said that it was unwholesome how Mike's arms were so short. He's like a T-Rex, Evan said. The first time Mike paid me, he had to get all crooked to get his wallet out. Most of the time I was in the arcade all by myself, and hardly anyone ever came in, just little kids who sat on the ancient skee-ball machines asking for free games. Those old skee-ball machines haven't really changed. Now my technique used to be I'd kind of do a sort of bank shot, like there was this kind of sweet spot that I would hit on the right bank.

53:09That was really close, wasn't it? You got the lowest amount of points you can get. I feel like my son that I'm taking out. You got the lowest one, Dad. That little beer cozy is going to be mine. No longer will my hand have to be so frigid when I'm drinking a Budweiser.

53:30Mike was an alcoholic, and he left me to open and close the place most of the time. Sometimes he would stagger in, in the middle of the afternoon, and lay down on the lopsided pool table. Once comfortably spread out, he'd ask me to cover him from head to toe with the stuffed animals for skee-ball so he could sleep without getting caught by the old woman who ran the pier. Every time I put Mike to bed, I became more and more convinced that yeshiva was the place for me.

54:01When he wasn't goofing off drunk, Mike was furthering Evan's work of trying to get me held. He would invite Nancy, the 19-year-old redhead who ran the water squirt game next door over so he could tell her about how she should de-virginalize me. Nancy was a Jersey girl who wore low-backed shirts that showed off a large, complicated dragon tattoo. She told me it was a Chinese wind god and that an old biker boyfriend had given it to her. It started at her neck and slithered all the way down into her pants to blow across the tundra. In the afternoon when business was slow, Nancy would come by and tell me about how Mike had just been over, pleading on my behalf, and how she tried to explain to him that we was just friends, right?

54:47Oh yeah, I'd say, swallowing back the hard lump of foul-tasting virgin tears congealing in my throat. The best. Watch the tram car, please. Listen to this music. Don't you feel like you're going to round, like, the corner and you're going to see, like, Joe Pesci beating someone to death with a baseball bat? That's all I could think about. It's a song called Wildwood Days. Do you hear it? Wildwood Days and Wildwood Nights.

55:17My producer Jonathan and I walk down the boardwalk where we discover what's got to be the very worst job in Wildwood. Most of the stuff I do is just off the top of my head. It's whatever I can pick up on the spot. This is Dutz Bonus Jr. The sounds you hear are of people shooting at him with guns. Dutz Bonas Jr. is a human paintball target. He shuffles back and forth and eggs on the crowd while being splattered like a Jackson Pollock canvas. You know, I'll put it as blunt as I can because this is how it is on my tax forms, too. I'm an entertainer. Not the dancer kind, but basically I get suited up in a hockey gear and I get shot at all night.

56:01And it doesn't start to get to you a little bit? Do you dream about it? Nah. I love it. It's entertaining to me because this is one of the jobs that I can be as creative as I want to be. And, you know, it's just like, you know, web page design. You know, when you go in, you can do whatever you want. Before Dutz, human paintball targets simply shuffled from side to side holding a shield. Then one day, Dutz dropped his shield and began to moonwalk. Soulja Boy was to follow. He also invented shadow boxing at the paintballs and running towards the shooters. Dutz is protected by a suit that looks like what you'd come up with if you tried to build a Michelin Man costume out of moist newspaper and epoxy glue.

56:45So people are armed with paintball guns? Yep, that we provide. Because a lot of people try to, you know, they want to bring their own, but we don't allow that. It's just not going to happen.

56:59So the suit that you wear protects you from any pain? For the most part, yeah. There's some weak spots, but I can't say where the weak spots are because then a lot of people will find out, and then it becomes a little dangerous.

57:18Before agreeing to talk with me, Dutz wanted to finish his break with the woman who works next door at the old-timey photo place. As it turns out, she's his wife, who we met on this very boardwalk. Dutz might spend his day getting fired at in a cage, but at least on his time off, he has someone to talk to, someone with whom to share the secret weak spots in his armor.

57:45Back when I lived there, Wildwood had this reputation for being a big party town. People were supposed to be scoring like nuts on the boardwalk every night, And actually, they were. The only real action I got that summer, though, was in the form of a single kiss. I later referred to it as the kiss that ruined my summer. It happened while I was out walking on the boardwalk late one night. I saw a group of older girls, maybe in their early 20s, coming toward me. One of them, a little ahead of the others, was sort of spinning with her arms stuck out and her long blonde hair all over the place. Just as she got right up close to me, she grabbed the back of my neck and put her lips right on mine.

58:27I remember as she pulled back, I spastically grabbed onto her wrist. I didn't want her to leave. Her friends had to pry my fingers off one at a time, and she stood there smiling at me, all stoned and airy. That night, back at the boarding house, in our room, I spent the rest of the evening obsessing. As it might have been the last one I'd receive until I got married, That kiss pretty much felt like my swinging bachelorhood. In Yeshiva, I'd be the mysterious one with a past. For the rest of the summer, I couldn't pass a woman on the boardwalk without thinking that we should somehow be meeting in a kiss, that that's how life should really be.

59:06It turned walking along the boardwalk into a relentless drizzle of small but horrible disappointments.

59:17I didn't know it then but that summer would prove the best one I'd have as a teenager even though I was worked like an indentured servant giving every penny of my earnings to Mrs. D even though I made no friends and even though I only made it to the beach but once where I sat on a mildewy boarding house washcloth exhausted and pale that whole summer felt like some big fat vacation just because I was 16 and away from my parents for the first time. When I got back home, I didn't end up going to yeshiva. I didn't bring home any pen pals money or happy romantic memories. But I did bring back a pair of black pants covered in small white skulls.

59:58They were really baggy and I had to wear them with 10-inch cuffs at the bottom. But when I showed up for my first day back at school, I thought I looked really punk rock. I thought, like anyone who'd never been held, that they were the pants of someone who got ailed all summer long.

1:00:23Jonathan Goldstein is the host of the podcast Heavyweight, which returns for a brand new season next month. You can find their amazing archive of old episodes wherever you get your podcasts. A lot of winners today? Everybody wins. Do you have a pattern? What would you say to get a guy like me to come over? I don't know if I would call you in. You don't look like the type of guy that would spend money here, you know? Was he saying that I'm too cool a customer, or was he saying you're too cheap a Jew? You see, I went on the roller coaster last night when I was feeling bad. Down by the sea in Santa Cruz, and I was feeling sad.

1:01:03But we went down and around, and it knocked me out of my head. Well, Program was produced today by Jane Marie and me with Ben Calhoun, Sarah Canning, Jonathan Benhevar, Lisa Pollack, Robin Semien, Alyssa Shipp, and Nancy Updike. Senior producer for today's show is Julie Snyder. Production help on this rerun from Adrienne Lilly, Stone Nelson, Ruby Schwartz, and Matt Tierney. Special thanks today to Bill Childs, David Althoff, Kim Martin, Jeff Potts, Dave Dickerson, Amy Silverman, Lindsay Young at Maury's Pier in Wildwood, New Jersey. Original scoring in Act 1 of our show by Dave Hill, featuring Dave Hill on guitar.

1:01:34Thanks today also to This American Life Partner, Sarah Coppolo. Life Partners here at the show support us with monthly or yearly donations with a very straightforward goal to help us continue making the show. If you would like to help us keep doing that, please consider becoming a Life Partner. You'll listen ad-free. You'll get regular bonus episodes. You'll get this little newsletter that I just started where I recommend stuff to see and hear. And I also do some behind-the-scenes stuff about the show, including this week, stuff about the Cole Lindbergh story, that Act 1 of today's show, that was interesting to me, that I haven't really talked about much and didn't make it into the story.

1:02:11Anyway, to join, to read that, go to thisamericanlife.org slash lifepartners. That link is also in the show notes. Thank you for considering this. This American Life is delivered to public radio stations by PRX, the public radio exchange. Thanks as always to our program's co-founder, Ms. Tori Malatia, whose turtle breeding experiments are finally paying off. I dare you guys to come feel these turtles. It sounds like a weird thing, but we really have the softest turtles in town. You should feel one. They're really soft. I'm Ira Glass. Back next week with more stories of This American Life. I had a roller coaster by the sea Thank you for helping me Roller coaster by the water You made me feel more as I ought to pull Oh, yes, you knocked me out of my head.

1:03:05Next week on the podcast of This American Life, Janet McNamara is a stand-up comedian. And this weird thing kept happening to her. People would come up to her after shows and say, I'm autistic. And just to let you know, you are too. So she got tested. I remember I took the test. And the guy, he just slipped up from his notebook and he goes, well, people with Asperger's generally have above-average IQs. So. I'm not smart enough to be mildly autistic. That's next week on the podcast on your local public radio station.

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