It's my cousin's 3rd birthday and as it was a child's birthday, my aunt decided to throw a little party. My aunt also decided that the absolute best best location for a child's Spider-Man themed party would be at the mall. I'd have understood if it was like a playground or something but it wasn't. It was the cold miserable dome at the top of the mall that is covered with glass and is supposed to look and feel all "new age"
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| Bitter cold and unhappiness |
whereas it just felt cold and smelled like aging 40 year olds tying to relive their youth.
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| My life is misery so I must drink alcohol in exotically uncomfortable locations |
I'd come to the mall with two intentions: to make my cousin believe that I loved him and to spend all of my funds on junk (which meant that I was uncharacteristically carrying cash).
What was characteristic, though, was the way I responded to the existence of the Spider-Man themed jumping castle in the middle of the area. It was so beautiful, I swear it was practically shining. It just stood there among the children and tiny tables and I knew in that moment that I must have it.
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| So beautiful |
Against my aunts wishes, I infiltrated the plastic castle and started to roll around. When I realized that children were beginning to stare I told them that there was food outside. The ones too stupid or too stubborn to leave were treated to a hungry stare until they started crying out of fear and had to be forcibly extracted from the castle. About 10 minutes after getting into the jumping castle every other child had been scared, tricked, sufficiently creeped or thrown out of the jumping castle and it was MINE.
I had the jumping castle for my own. For the first time in years I was in a jumping castle and, possibly for the first time in my life, I was alone in the castle. It was mine and mine alone. So I pretty much spasmed, rabidly attacked the interior of the castle and did stuff that would normally be painful or suicidal and generally went nuts until I accidentally jumped into one of the castle's corners and heard a sound kinda like "TCHHH". I should probably mention at this point that I was a high school sophomore at the time and, more importantly, being 15, I was probably rather over the average weight that Spider-Man jumping castles usually accommodate for.
Initially I was totally oblivious, still in the throes of jumping castle induced insanity but I noticed that the castle was getting a bit weaker than usual. Then I began to notice that the ceiling was a bit lower than I remembered. This was quite worrying because before long I realized that the castle was quite definitely sinking and the tear I had heard when jumping into a corner was not just me hearing stuff and I probably destroyed the jumping castle at a 3 year old's birthday party. Needless to say my aunt was not pleased. I slowly took the walk of shame out of the slowly deflating jumping castle and for some reason, patted my pockets (quite by accident really). For the second time in about 20 seconds the sunken plastic heap of what remained of a Spider-Man jumping castle accurately represented my emotions.
My wallet that had contained my savings which I was going to blow in Virgin Megastore on random crap had disappeared and it had last been in my pocket when I'd entered the jumping castle. I gotta tell you, swimming in the silicon remains of a, once great, Spider-Man jumping castle searching for your 3 years worth of savings is not fun. It took half an hour and numerous near death experiences by suffocation to find it and to this day my aunt subtly blames me for ruining her child's birthday party.
