I Wanna Be Your Blog

Whatever the Opposite of Nostalgia Is

Last night I had a nightmare I was back at my old theme park job, where I worked in the box office. It was during their month-long Halloween event, which I’m sure is all set to start this week or next.

Halloween was a weird time at the park. You worked late hours. Park guests were drunk. A deafening half-hour long loop of industrial music was playing in the entrance plaza. It was the only time you’d see celebrities. Your managers’ expectations of politeness were lowered. People would try to bribe you. You would be accosted by ghoulish clowns with chainsaws on your way to your lunch breaks.

The thing about working in a theme park is that it’s already like living in a horror movie. And then they add scary clowns.

The clowns were supposed to leave anyone in a park uniform alone, but park veterans would tell you that every year the same pattern emerged. The first week, the clowns played by the rules. The second week they started testing boundaries. The third week you couldn’t walk from your ticket booth, where you had just endured hours worth of non-stop work coupled with near-endless abuse by park guests, to the break room without getting a chainsaw pulled in your face.

I am perhaps too apt to complain about my life, so last night’s dream was a good reminder that this time last year I was in a long-distance relationship, I lived with my parents, and complaining to HR about the “boundary problems” of clowns with chainsaws seemed like a completely normal part of my work environment.