Samuel israel
SDG family narrowly avoids Orlando shooting!
By, like, two days. Exactly two days, actually. Also, the greater danger would seem to have been from trampling rather than flying lead. But still.
Apparently, a Sunday afternoon of disorderly teen behavior at nonMouse affiliated Orlando water park Wet ‘n Wild ended in a shooting yesterday.
The gun used may or may not have been a .22 recovered at the scene; a leg wound, not serious, was sustained by a teen. (Writing this sentence, I’m reminded that Amanda Shaw at the First Things recently blogged excerpts from a style catalogue once given to Ernest Hemingway, recommendations from which include commending “He suffered a broken leg in a fall” over “he broke his leg in a fall,” in part on the grounds that “presumably the man has two legs” and so “a leg” is preferable to “his leg.” I tried to apply this logic here, with rather unsatisfactory results, since my sentence now fails to specify that the teen was shot, rather than, say, skinning his er, a knee in a fall. Suggestions for improvements are welcome.)
One or two shots were fired, and the shooting victim’s brother was also struck in the lip by something, but it could have been a rock. Also, “[e]veryone was running and people were trampled.”
Not ordinarily the sort of thing I would note at JA.o, except for one thing: My family and I were at Wet ‘n Wild exactly 48 hours earlier all Friday afternoon, in fact on the last day of our week-long Orlando vacation (about which more later).
FWIW, I didn’t notice any rowdy teen behavior on Friday. As far as I know, the only noteworthy visitor phenomena that day was an Assemblies of God convention that had the park rented for private use after hours, but although I was actually in the park as much as 30 minutes after the official closing, I didn’t personally witness any rowdy charismatic phenomena such as slaying in the Spirit or anything.
In other brushes with amusement-park mayhem, my sister was at Six Flags Great Adventure on the very same day in 1984 as the fatal Haunted Castle fire that killed eight teenagers. (My father at work heard the news about the fatal fire on television and called home to make sure my sister was safe.)
On an earlier Six Flags outing, in the same Haunted Castle, I was mugged, but a friend was carrying my money and so I didn’t lose anything. Coincidentally, there was also an Assemblies of God youth group at Six Flags on that day I remember because I was one of them. (Those A/G folks sure do like their amusement parks.)
Anyway, the Wet ‘n Wild thing being a rather trivial incident, I didn’t feel as weird as I did having taken my (then smaller) family to the top of the Empire State Building and looking at the World Trade Center the week before 9/11.
Well, that’s all I have to say about that.
Get the story (or not).
P.S. Oh, incidentally, for those who may have missed it the first time around, here’s the (rather more exciting) excitement from our last family vacation: The Great Elevator Escape.
Related posts: Ortiz jersey
