I’m probably going to regret posting this on my main account if a future employer ever does a deep background check, but the trauma was real, the comedy is golden, and I didn’t suffer through this for nothing.
Back in late August, my friends and I realized summer was basically over and we hadn't hit a single waterpark. So we grabbed tickets to a local aquapark that had just opened a few new slides.
One in particular caught our eye: a trapdoor drop slide. You step into a coffin-looking capsule five stories up, cross your arms over your chest like a corpse, wait for a countdown, and the floor just drops out beneath you. You’re literally just free-falling straight down a plastic tube. It sounded terrifying, but we decided it was our exact type of fun.
We climbed the five flights of stairs to the top, and I volunteered to go first. My heart was pounding. Free-falling hits totally different when you’re in a thong swimsuit with your cheeks pressed against wet plastic, waiting for a employee to pull the switch on you.
I got inside and made a quick joke about famous last words. The operator pointedly told me to cross my legs tightly. I crossed them lazily, thinking it was just a generic safety rule. Then the floor gave out.
I had about two seconds of "I fucked up" followed instantly by "How is this slide even legal?!"
The loud bang of the trapdoor opening spooked me so bad that I panicked and uncrossed everything.
Before my brain could process what happened, I was plummeting through the dark in a vertical drop, receiving the most violent wedgie in human history. A thong is already sitting right in your business by design; add high-velocity water and pure gravity, and it turned into a cheese grater. The fabric shot up so hard I’m amazed it didn't slice right through my suit.
After being power-washed by gravity for a few seconds, the slide finally leveled out and I skidded to a stop. It wasn't fun. It was just pure, blinding pain.
I scrambled out of the pool, frantically pulling my ruined swimsuit back into place while trying to ignore the sting. That’s when I felt liquid starting to run down my legs.
I checked for blood—all clear—so I started waddling toward the bathroom to assess the damage. Water kept leaking out of me with every single step. My boyfriend made a joke that I’d peed myself from terror.
I finally got into a stall, sat down, and experienced a high-pressure, forced dual-hole flush. The slide had literally rammed chlorinated water into every available opening, and my body was now aggressively purging it. I sat there for ten minutes emptying out what felt like 10% of my total body weight.
For the rest of the day, I just had to accept that I’d been violated by municipal water engineering.
Hours later, I stood up from my sunbed, only to look down in horror at two distinct wet spots left behind on the lounge cushion. My body had apparently been holding onto reservoir levels of pool water in places I didn't know could store liquid.
To make matters worse, my friend went down the same slide right after me and suffered a similar fate—though thankfully for her, only one of her lower openings took on water.
Moral of the story: When the slide operator tells you to cross your legs tightly, do it like your life depends on it. Otherwise, physics will hand you a free, highly aggressive pool-water enema.