A/N: This is something that I wrote a while ago, and the issue that I wrote about has since been resolved, but I like the metaphor. Enjoy.

This one time when I was about 10 or 11 years old, my mom took me to the county fair. This was back when I had just found out that I liked roller coasters and thrill rides like that, and I was so excited to ride some dirty machine that smelled like tires, metal, and sweat.

When we got to the fair, the first thing that I did was eat a massive corn dog that was completely covered in ketchup and saturated in grease. Content with my full stomach, I decided to seek out the most impressive ride that I could find. Would it be the roller coaster? No, I had already mastered those. Would it be something that spun? Closer, but no.

And that's when I found it.

The ride was called "The Zipper" and it was magnificent. It was a tall elliptical looking thing from the side with free-spinning cages that were pulled around the tower, vertically, by a belt, all while the entire apparatus rotated on an axis. It was the perfect amount of thrill, and the brightly colored lights that covered the Zipper only enticed me more.

I tore off four tickets from the sheet and handed them to a man with yellowed skin, calloused hands, and two teeth short of a full set. He stuffed the precious card-stock into the pocket of his dirty apron, pulled the pin on the latch of the rickety cage, and held the door open for me. I stepped in, adrenaline already coursing through my veins.

Once everyone was loaded into their respective cages and I sat swinging above the crowd, the ride lurched and the motor made a whirring noise. It had started.

As the speed of the belt increased, so did the rate of the tumbling. I braced my hands against a roll bar and was smiling like a foolish little kid that I was, maybe even letting out a scream of glee every now and then.

But, the motor eventually shut off and the Zipper stopped zipping. When the grungy-looking man came to my cage to unlock it, he told me that there wasn't a line and asked if I wanted to go again. I, without thinking twice, smiled and said "sure."

I guess a few people got off at that point because it was a couple of minutes before the ride started up again. But when it did, I was excited and preparing myself to be thrilled again.

But it didn't quite work out that way.

About a minute into my second turn on the ride, I started to feel that corn dog shifting around in my stomach. My laughter was silenced by my attempts to keep my nausea at bay. By the end of the second time, I was more than ready to get off of the thing.

As the man operating the machine rolled around to my cage again, he asked if I wanted to go for one more time. I shook my head, not trusting my ability to speak. He must have misunderstood me, though, because I did end up riding the Zipper a third time.

At the end of that turn, I very sternly told the man that I wanted to get off. I stumbled out of the cage and through the gate, miserable, into my mother's arms. All I wanted to do was sit down at a plastic picnic table and sip ice water from a large, red paper Coke cup so that the color would come back to my cheeks and my knees would stop shaking.

Just let me off the stupid ride already.