How Not to Go Down a Waterslide

• Step 1: Fall off your floating chair in the deep end of the pool, getting water up your nose and turning you into a sputtering, flailing mess.

• Step 2: Give in to taunting by 9 year olds who find it hilarious that you are sputtering because of a little water up your nose and who start making chicken noises at you when you tell them there is no way in hell you are going down a waterslide.

• Step 3: Exit the pool but first trip on the step and skin your knee. Do not pay attention to the foreshadowing of said knee scrape.

• Step 4: Walk up the rock steps to the top of the waterslide, not paying a bit of attention to how high up it really is.

• Step 5: Prepare yourself to slide down the slide by sitting down at the lip of the slide, then slip on the wet rocks and begin careening down the tube slide, completely unprepared for what is to come.

• Step 6: Spend the entire time in the slide getting plastic-burn on the back of your legs because the slide is completely dry, swearing because of said plastic-burn, and trying to figure out how best to enter the water to avoid a) losing the top to your swim suit which has somehow come loose b) smashing yourself on the rocks on either side of the slide exit c) drowning in the deep end of the pool.

• Step 7: Fail at the first two of the goals listed in step 6.

• Step 8: Make the 9 year olds promise not to mock you for eternity for failing spectacularly at something as simple as going down a water slide.

• Step 9: Swim over to the swim-up-bar and pour yourself a drink.

• Step 10: Repeat starting with Step 1 if you did not learn your lesson the first time.