Rocky Point Mania

There are a couple of facts you should know to put the following 3 photos in context.

1. In Rhode Island, there was an amusement park called Rocky Point. The rides were rusty and dangerous. The people who ran the rides appeared to be alcoholic halfwits. The entire place was falling apart, a real old-time carnival, and it was a BLAST.

2. One summer day, Mitchell, his sister Sandi, and I went to Rocky Point.

3. There was a ride called The Flume – like a roller coaster which ended with you splashing in the water. We rode it multiple times.

4. Earlier that summer, Mitchell had been cast as one of the show people at Rocky Point. He was going to be “Doc Abbott” – a comedian who stood on his own little stage and did horrible jokes along the lines of, “Oh, just for the halibut” and then pulling out a huge fish. Mitchell was mortified. And also rather frightened. Because the Doc Abbott stage was by itself, out in the middle of nowhere, and the possibility of being run out of Rocky Point by a bunch of heckling drunk halfwits was huge. But the final straw that broke the camel’s back was the day at rehearsal when a Rhode Island girl, hired as a dancer, got pissed off because she was being made to do comedic bits and skits. She turned to Mitchell and said, in the thickest Rhode Island accent on the planet, “Allz I wanna do is dyance.” Mitchell understood her concerns, but in that moment he had had it. He heard what she had to say, and then strolled up to the director, informed the director he had quit, and walked out of the rehearsal hall. “Allz I wanna do is dyance” is still a refrain amongst my group of friends.

5. Naturally, we had to go find Doc Abbott’s stage. Still soaking wet from our Flume rides, we took three photos, one of each of us, “performing” on the stage.

6. I find Mitchell’s photo to be truly demonic. He looks like a gleeful dictator.

7. Sandi is, to put it mildly, a fashion guru. Even when she was 16, she would wear gold lame pant suits and stilettoes and still somehow pull it off. She is cutting edge, glamorous, fabulous, and always looks put together. So that is why it is truly confusing to see her here, wearing short white shorts, and white flats. Mitchell and I do not understand what happened.