About That Time I Was Absolutely Decimated by the Wave Pool at Typhoon Lagoon

Woosh.

I would like to pretend that I am a cool, no sweat, always chill kind of person. Someone with swagger, a woman who owns a room. The kind of person a stranger sees from across the room, and says, “I need to know her.”

Maybe it’s the banana yellow eyeglasses or the bold prints I wear. Maybe it’s that I hover somewhere near a regular-size person’s knees and they think, “Well, isn’t she cute.” And I am. I am very cute in a Halloween candy, bite-size way. If not fun, why fun shaped, right?

And then, once I’ve lured a person in with my texture, I will share this is all a farce. A hoax. Smoke and mirrors. Because one time, in the not too distant past, I was absolutely decimated by the wave pool at Disney’s Typhoon Lagoon.

Maybe, Dear Reader, you’re thinking, a wave pool? At Disney?

What are you a Disney Adult?

And I would say, we’re going to bypass that and skip to the part where I was fighting for my life mere steps from toddlers in loaded swimmy diapers—and the elderly with paper thin ankles. I share this because I want to let you down now before we cross paths, and you get any kind of idea that I am exciting and “living life to its fullest.” The kind of person who always has an answer for the question, “So, what did you do over the weekend?” Dear Reader, no. I will never pass up a nap, a fountain beverage handed to me at a drive-thru or spending all day doing nothing.

Today, I talked to my friend for a good thirty minutes about different types of ice, and why ice makers are second to only air fryers as must-have kitchen appliances. It was riveting. And this isn’t the only conversation I’ve had about ice. I’ve been told, by another friend, I could never survive in Europe where there is no ice culture.

I made that up. “Ice culture.” But I want to be a part of ice culture: rating it, consuming it, making it. Mainly because I can do ice, I cannot do swimming.

When I attempt to swim, I take both of my soft double chins and place them above the water, and slobber my way through a doggy-paddle. As my tongue dangles, my thick stumps pump and rotate like the tension of my body is too loose and I go . . . nowhere. I become an optical illusion; that forward motion begets distance. Instead, I hover, I tread, I tire myself out with inadequacy. I’d like to think I am a beautiful, taunt mermaid with jewel-toned seashells and a curving, aquamarine fin ready to glide through the water in search of dinglehoppers and thingamabobs. But I am more like a bulldog named Croissant, and someone put me in a polka dot swim skirt for views. Probably Adam Sandler.

It’s not that I can’t swim, it’s just that I cannot do it very well. I tried, there were lessons at the YMCA as a child, and my grandparents had a deep, inground pool nestled into the forest of their backyard with a bouncy diving board where I spent summers looking at my grandmother watching me from the window. Always at the sink, I could see Nanny’s shadow in the kitchen window. Sometimes she would venture out in her terry cloth romper that, at one time, must have been teal but hovered, by the time I came around—and depending on the angle—somewhere between sea moss and ivory. With a long Merit cigarette in her hand, and espadrilles wedges on her feet, she would sit at the edge of the pool’s steps and talk to me through drags of her cigarette, making sure I was still breathing.

Despite all of this pool experience, I am cooked if I ever need to swim for my life. I know this about myself, I accept it. I tell myself, “Liz, you do not have to try your hardest at everything, let this go.” And I have. I am also not very good at walking at an acceptable pace, and middle-aged women in athleisure have let me know it. They’re like battering rams with a to-do list, and I never stand a chance. I am pulverized by them getting their shit done.

If I am a sucker for the faucet water of a community pool, then hold on tight because I am a deranged mega fan for a lazy river. Pools are fabulous, very chill, but a lazy river? Hold all the notifications while I figure out the best method to fit every single pound of me inside a teeny, tiny inflatable pastry hole. I have given up on trying to jump my way into or onto a pool donut. My feet have gone airborne—toes over ass, children have been conked between the eyes, I’ve lost sunglasses and most of my dignity.

For the safety of all, my preferred lazy river method for floatation device adhesion is to put the donut hole over my head and shimmy it downward, like it’s a blow up bra, and then bend my knees and let the water propel me forward. At Typhoon Lagoon, they have floating seats, which is a real *standing ovation* for the Imagineers. I know animatronics are basically people now and, wow, what an innovation, but the floating chairs at Typhoon Lagoon are C-U-N-T-Y.

The lazy river is always my main squeeze. I am not interested in water slides, especially now that I am middle aged; it feels too much like getting an MRI. But with the added bonus of almost drowning at the end of the tube, instead of, I guess medical debt. No, thanks, I’ll continue to laze around in my water donut. But sometimes, at least this particular time, I thought, “The wave pool; that seems low stakes.”

And low stakes is my preferred lane. I never want to ride anything that takes me through Satan's asshole and then flushes me back to Earth. I do not want to feel like I am going to die—whether water ride or ride-ride. Wave pools can be intense, I know this, everyone should know this. Obviously, wave pools mimic the push and pull of ocean waves, which is why I thought, I’ll hang at the shore with the toddlers and retirees. After all, Typhoon Lagoon’s Surf Pool, according to Disney, is not only the largest wave pool in North America, but visitors can expect to “wade into the warm water where gentle waves lap white sandy beaches.”

The emphasis on gentle is all mine. I can handle this, I thought. No problems here. I wouldn’t have to fear the reaper of gargantuan waves, from this far back, at the shoreline of the pool with the toddlers in bucket hats and ornery adultier-adults, slathered in thick gloops of sunscreen. Doggy-paddling for my life would not be necessary. This is Disney! At the water park! Not anywhere near where the waves are made.

Like every water park with a wave pool, Typhoon Lagoon warns swimmers before waves start. On Typhoon Lagoon’s website, Disney refers to this warning as a “thunderous ‘sonic boom,’” and, if that sounds ominous, so be it. I might add another: “demonic.”

At the shoreline of the wave pool, healthy-ish, middle-aged people do not think, “brace yourself.” And, quite frankly, that was a mistake on my part. Standing next to my husband, tepid tap water sloshing at my ankles, I felt safe. At ease. Typhoon Lagoon is full of lush greenery and palm trees, it’s supposed to be a Caribbean island with a shipwreck, so it’s Margaritaville for toddlers and their responsible parties. And the weirdos, like my husband and I, who only have each other on this trip, and no small children.

And because the universe can be a real bitch sometimes when I am doing my best “stop and look around for a minute,” in comes a humble wave to bitch slap me back into reality. Like, a literal wave—WOOSH, MOTHERFUCKER!—and down I went into the ankle-high surf.

I started flailing my limbs in every direction like a Saturday morning cartoon mammal, playing physical comedy for laughs. Rolling and bending, water lapping into my mouth, I could not seem to help myself sit up and propel my limbs into a standing position. The intensity of the wave pool’s tension was too great for a sloven, keyboard junkie extremely interested in award season fashions and Instagram cat Reels.

“Well, this is embarrassing,” I thought. Following it up with, “I hope that’s not my last thought.” And then immediately, “This is exactly how I would die, a stupid death . . . in a baby pool.”

Face down in the wave pool, the minor waves most people would step through continued to send me into physical hysterics. Where, I wanted to know, inches before an embarrassing death, was my husband’s hand. Was he not right next to me?

Interviewed on the local news, I guess he would say, “I should have looked down.”

“I am pathetic,” I say to myself. Yes, definitely, that’s the one. My last and final thought.

Which is, of course, when I see the red blur—with barely any urgency, except a raised eyebrow and an aura of pity—making her way to my fish-out-of-water-logged body.

“Do you need help ma’am?”, a kind twenty-something with two bendable knees and strong arch support—the things I envy grow more idiosyncratic by the day.

A hand materializes in front of my eyeballs. A beefy one, with thick knuckle hair, and a palm the size of my face.

“No, thank you,” I stammer, letting the meaty claw dangling in my sight line hoist me up like a toy at the boardwalk.

I look around and even the babies are staring, the retirees squinting. I get the sense they were not expecting this level of free entertainment at the shore of the wave pool. All the action, they wrongly assumed, would be happening way out there.

“It almost got me,” I say to my husband.

“No it did not, “ he says.

“If I didn’t drown, then the embarrassment would do it. It was that close, “ I say.

“No one even noticed, you’re fine. It was not that bad,” he says.

“That was you who didn’t notice, everyone else, Compelled. To. Stare.”

“No, you are making things up.”

This is the key to a long-term relationship: find someone who sells you on something even more delusional than you already are, about yourself.

“I’m going back to the lazy river,” I say, “it’s safe there.”

For my dignity. Which did not need to be said, but was certainly felt. Like the wave that took me out, in the most magical place on earth.

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Flop Era is written by Liz Henry whose sole hydration is Diet Coke, and has made hating AI her entire personality. Only crisp carbonation will cool this human data center.