"Alright, we're finally here!" Linny looped her arms around both of her travel companions,' bringing them along as she jolly skipped toward the arch that marked as one of many entrances of the amusement park.
The trio stood amidst crowds of families in Mickey and Minnie Mouse ears - the dads with their cargo shorts and cargo phone holsters, the moms with their visors and sunglasses, the toddlers in their prams and so on.
"Wow, being here really does make you feel like a kid," Angel said, as if he almost could capture what feeling like his younger self would be like. So far, he could only put himself in the shoes of the dancing bald man who he saw in every Six Flags commercial playing on the hanging television screen in Pinkie's RV. He was too embarrassed to ask whether that was really how you get around parks like those, so he feigned his
"And a victim of capitalism," The pot-smoking 60s counterculture hippie-activist spirit of Pinkie muttered from the side. "Still can't believe kids fall for their kitschy world but okay." Linny wondered whether Pinkie reminded her of her older sister or the sister her older sister wished she could have had. Either way, Linny liked how Pinkie was never afraid to speak on her opinions.
"Ho, hum. Can't we just live like Boomers for a moment?" Linny asked, standing akimbo. She refused to acknowledge the irony behind her words, knowing full well the reality of her expected life span.
"Sure, hun, 'cause we know how to live! Buy, buy, buy, that's what we always used to say!" Pinkie snorted, shaking her head. Linny and Angel caught her eyes rolling, appearing to have seen better days than looking back to when people's eyes were glued on the next big thing on Sears catalogs and channels that ran 24/7 infomercials. Pinkie wasn't exactly wrong, considering how every colorful shop had some sort of cashier's booth or price tag stickered on the bottom of Disney characters' bobble heads and plushies that sometimes surrounded the majority of the walls of the shops. The bobble heads and plushies would transform, sometimes wearing safari hats with a leopard print sash wrapped around them and other times donning sequined mermaid tails, depending on the world the shop pretended to be. Despite the sameness and predictability that the trio picked up from the forceful ringing of cashier machines and parents with arms of merchandise that they'll forget they have bought when they come home, lining up at a brainwashed zombie pace, they still couldn't help but propel themselves to the next house to greet the next Disney princess or one of Mickey Mouse's friends. By late afternoon, even Pinkie was cheerfully amused by the handshaking of these white gloved creatures that she had forgotten the real people under them, who an hour before they arrived at Orlando, she had protested for better living wages for those who had to soldier through Florida's ninety-degree humid weather under costumes.
YOU ARE READING
Catching Up to You
AdventureIt's the early 2010s and people are still in their deep blue pill state of the 9-to-5 corporate hustle, including Linny Le, a woman in her early twenties who's teetering on the cliff's edge of monotonous insanity. Bored, friendless, and unfulfilled...
