On Dolphin Shows

So as I mentioned previously, I went to 6 Flags in New Jersey this Sunday.

Pause for lamentations over New Jersey. Moving on.

Of the many adventures that were had this day, including genital destroying roller coasters, 100% awesome weather 99% of the time and an uncommon plethora of attractive underage girls wearing purple, the day was clearly won out by catchphrases.

My friends love catchphrases. To wit: at a rather raucous night in a young female party-goer actually asked, "What's with your friends and catchphrases?" which is now, obviously, a repeated-daily catchphrase among us.

All day long we were spouting quotes. Among the usual we added "4-5-6," a reference to the unbeatable highest roll when playing the dice game Cee-lo, a roll I might add that is entirely up to chance but still gambled upon. Seeing as the weather for Sunday was utterly attrocious and had been predicted as such, Jay, the planner of the group, gambled on the hope that the weather would not be too bad and we would have the park mostly to ourselves. This turned out to be almost entirely accurate. All day until about 7:30, in fact.

However it did mist and drizzle a bit, but walking miles back and forth across the park this was actually refreshing. It picked up only briefly, right as we attempted to grab an over-priced meal. Rain and appetites abates, we wandered into a strange alcove for a while to let our stomachs settle before tackling the toughest rides available.

As we entered the stone tunnel, lightly dusted with fake cobwebs for Halloween, we asked a park patron what exactly it was we were following so many aquaphobic people into. "A Halloween dolphin show," we were told.

A Halloween dolphin-show. Yes. Yes, we were excited.

We past a skeleton who was clearly more morose over her job prospects than being undead and wiped down a couple of bleachers about half-way up the outdoor arena, assuming that the first three rows may get murdered.

While we waited for the dolphins' masters – who had not in fact dressed their marine mammals in adorable orange-and-black jack-o-lantern costumes – to start something up, we encountered a young lady down towards the front who was for all intents and purposes a dumb bitch.

Now as an aside, I should mention that when I say "dumb bitch" I do not mean any derogation of women in general. Rather, I specify that this woman's actions and speech over the next several minutes proved her to be both tremendously dumb and a complete bitch, maybe a bitch-and-a-half.

This woman, only in her early twenties, entered with her boyfriend, a young man whose bright yellow t-shirt was unfortunate to have lost its sleeves I can only assume in some kind a freak accident with a sleeve-removing device. Upon entering, the first thing this girl demanded was, "Oh, let's not sit here, these seats are all wet. Let's sit somewhere else."

At this time the author would like to remind you that this is a giant fish tank outdoors on a rainy day.

Now as we waited this girl was discovered by a middle-aged voodoo zombie hobo who apparently knew her many years ago. Breaking character, the zobo squealed and hugged the girl tightly while her boyfriend looked only confused.

Now, being something of a dick myself, I started a studio audience Awww … that went up in pitch at the end, starting first with me, then Jay, then the rest of our small group and finally encompassing the entire show in attendance. Continuing her conversation with Chuckles the Decomposing, the girl rather politely flipped off everyone behind her back and continued her conversation for quite some time without introducing her boyfriend at all, resulting in several more angry spectators picking on her for the next few minutes. Even we thought those guys were kind of dicks, though.

So we have established that this girl was dumb, and a bit bitchy in how she reacts to hilarious but relatively clean, wholesome attention to her foibles. I have gone on far too long.

What this girl said, regardless of how you feel about my judgments to her capacity for wisdom or civility, proves what kind of person we were dealing with.

After maybe fifteen minutes of waiting for the show to start, people told where they were headed and snapping photos of the pleasant porpoises taking recreational laps around the pool, this person uttered in full Valley Girl lilt and with absolute, axiomatic certainty in much the same way a child would note that "Diapers don't go in theeere…," "This is not a dolphin show."

If there was any real doubt, it was at this moment that we left, not because we thought she was right and that this was in fact some elaborate hoax played upon us by the trainers and their dolphins, intelligent beasts from the sea more evolved than we could possibly imagine, but because we had already discussed at length what it would cost to run and jump into the pool, and suddenly we were all faced with the urge to submerge this woman under water until the bubbles stopped floating to the top.