I was once small. A little person, and consequently everything and the majority of people – save my younger sister – were bigger than me.
When I started to develop reasoning – perhaps around the age of five – I concluded that being small had many distinct disadvantages. For instance, I had to go to school, and often eat stuff I didn’t really enjoy – such as broccoli. Adults seemed to have all the fun since, as I rationalised, they could do pretty much what they liked when they liked. They also didn’t have to be educated as they already knew what they needed to know; remember, I was only five or thereabouts.
Now, as a fully-fledged and reluctant member of adulthood I yearn for the halcyon days of childhood where innocence and fantasy were infinitely better than what is now on offer to me as I negotiate the world as a so-called grown-up. This personal philosophical conundrum isn’t – as I have discovered – anything new. Indeed, in addition to the mountain of literature on the subject of the transition from childhood to adulthood and what a colossal change this represents, there are many mainstream examples of my sense of loss. As an example of this, one of my favourite films is “Vice Versa” in which a father and his 11-year old son swap bodies after both touch a magical Tibetan skull.
Being naïve – one of the defining traits of a young child – is, in my humble opinion, something to value as it fuels curiosity and discovery. These characteristics alone can actually make you look and feel younger. If you struggle with this proclamation please read my piece on thinking ourselves old where scientific research reaches the same conclusion. Although I have sought to reflect many of these easy wins within my own life – such as smiling and laughing as much as I possibly can – I have realised that this is a hard battle to fight. Quite simply, being an adult often sucks and there are a plethora of pressures that can easily wipe the smile off the face of the most resolute people.
The only time I was unequivocally happy was when I was small; but here is the real twist. I don’t want to hop into a time machine and suddenly traverse the decades to when I was in shorts and hated a certain green vegetable. Any change in my timeline would invoke the “butterfly effect” – the notion that any alteration, no matter how minor, would ultimately lead to significant variations in the future. Would I have met my late wife, had my two incredible children, and more recently my three beautiful grandchildren? But hey! I so wanted to be small again! It just wasn’t fair – and how often had I uttered that statement as a five-year-old?! Then as if by magic I became small again.
I’d been lucky enough to go to the parks in Orlando, Florida, previously, but that was in a past life where I metaphorically had the world on my shoulders; a young family, demanding job, and stress that seem to leach from every avenue of adult life. On reflection, the enjoyment of this family holiday was overcast by the nagging thought that the money we had spent could have been better utilised elsewhere. This time around it was different; none of the financial fears, and I was accompanied by a four and two-year-old: Arthur and Darcie – my grandchildren. They possess a raw innocence that I could celebrate without constraint. My children had, no doubt, displayed a similar emotional engagement all those years ago, albeit they were a tad older and I was blinded to it by the scourge of societal sacrifice. This time I didn’t intend to be a hostage to fate, and Hagrid rode to my rescue!
I must confess that I’ve seen some of the Harry Potter films but I’ve never read any of the books. The Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Universal Studios blew my mind, and Hagrid’s Magical Creatures Motorbike Adventure – essentially a high-speed roller coaster – flipped my consciousness back to that of a five-year-old. I was small again, and everything that came with that age flooded back – without a filter. Yells, astonishment, and adrenaline infused awe! It was truly awesome!
The rapid onset of the “fight or flight stress response” – the mechanism that programmes us to flee or fight the risk facing us – causes several physical signs of apocalyptic anxiety, including a pounding heart, faster breathing, and an energy boost caused by the release of glucose. Indeed, in the 1980s researchers measured the heart rates of people riding the double-corkscrew Coca Cola Roller in Glasgow. The data was disturbing; heartbeats per minute more than doubled, from an average 70 before, to 153 moments after the ride had begun. Older riders got dangerously close to what would be deemed medically unsafe for their age.
Close to the edge euphoria also leads to the flooding of the bloodstream with endorphins which are known to produce feelings of intense delight. These outcomes pose an incredible juxtaposition: the simultaneous experience of stress and pleasure. Can they safely occupy the same space?
The answer to this conundrum recognises that not all stress is bad for us. Eustress – from the Greek “eu,” meaning good – is a positive kind of stress. Dutch researchers discovered that roller coaster rides can be “eustressful.” Inviting a sample group of asthma sufferers onto a theme park ride, they were acutely aware that elevated negative stress levels would make their symptoms more severe. The question to be answered by this novel approach was: would the opposite effect be possible by experiencing eustress? The research found that while lung function was reduced – due in the main to the screaming – so was the feeling of shortness of breath, suggesting that roller coaster riders perceive the experience as stressful in a positive way.
During my juvenile-infused experiences at the parks, I wasn’t blind to the fact that not everyone – even members of my own party – were hopping and skipping to the next out-of-body experience. Levels of dopamine – a chemical messenger in the brain important to the functioning of neurological reward pathways – were scrutinised in further research that led to the submission that enjoyment of intense physical experiences such as riding on roller coasters may reflect individual differences in brain chemistry. Fascinatingly, people who have higher levels of dopamine production may be more predisposed to other sensation seeking behaviours, from even faster rides to sexual experimentation. A whole new meaning to the sensation of having a good ride – perhaps not during a roller coaster ride though, due to being strapped in; however, I would never dismiss some light bondage – but that’s a whole different subject. Moving swiftly on!
@ianjkirke
Title image reproduced by kind permission of Emma Ellis.