The man sits me down in a chair, sticks a needle in my mouth, holds it there for about an hour and a half, then takes it out and waits. After a few minutes, he starts to drill. When it start hurting, he gives me another needle, waits a few minutes, and continues drilling. Again it starts hurting and again he gives me a needle. Finally, after he’s drilled away half my tooth, he tells me that I’m going to have to come back again so he can give me more needles and drill some more, just enough to take the root out and kill the tooth. Then I pay for this service, with the knowledge that I’ll have to pay more when I come in for the nerve-ripping-out ceremony.

After forty minutes of needles, pain and discomfort, all of which I paid for, and the promise that I have to come back for more, what do I say to him?

“Thank you.”

I wrote an email to Canada’s Wonderland about the Gatorade incident, and here’s their response:

Thank you for contacting Canada’s Wonderland. We appreciate your feedback and I have forwarded it on to our Security for their consideration. Our No Outside Food Policy has been in effect for the past Season and was instituted by our new Parent company, Cedar Fair. This is a policy that they enforce in all of their Parks with exception to water and individual portion snacks, as well as any dietary required foods.

If you should have any further questions or concerns please do not hesitate to contact me.

We went to Canada’s Wonderland today for the first time this year. Only one new ride this year, the monstrous roller coaster “Behemoth” which we will not be going on. It’s about the same height as the Superman coaster at Darien Lake which I’ve ridden once, and that’s just too high for me. Feel free to call me a chicken, you’re right.

First off, to the slimy piece-of-shit scumbag who stole my son’s Transformers baseball cap while we were riding the go-karts, you could have gotten your own at Zellers for under $10. You made an eight-year-old cry — I hope you enjoy the hat.

“I wish I had a camera phone” moment: Walking past the “holy crap is this ever slow” swan ride, and seeing a little girl, maybe four, sitting in the front of the swan enjoying herself while her father sat in the back, pecking away on his Blackberry.

WTF moment: Going through security at the front gate. We had a backpack with some snacks and a bottle or two of water, Gail’s mom had a water bottle and a thermos of coffee, and the boys were each carrying a bottle of Gatorade (all of the bottles were plastic). The security lady said that the water bottles were OK, but the Gatorade bottles were not allowed. Gail asked if the problem was that it was Gatorade rather than water and she said no, they’re just not allowed to let Gatorade (or pop) bottles in. They were the same kind of bottle, though a little bigger (750 mL rather than 500 mL), so what’s the difference? What makes a Gatorade bottle more dangerous than a water bottle? Perhaps it’s because they don’t want people bringing their own stuff in, so that if they are hungry or thirsty, they are forced to buy food and beverages in the park. Again, I understand this, but why wouldn’t that apply to bottled water? They sell bottled water inside the park as well, so I don’t understand the logic of this rule either. And it’s not enforced — we bring snacks (grapes, oranges, carrots, celery sticks, juice boxes) almost every time we go to the park, and security has never said a word until the Gatorade incident today. Another example of someone in authority making a rule that makes no sense, and everyone else blindly accepting and enforcing it.

After we confirmed the rule with the security lady a couple of times (“you’re saying we can’t bring a Gatorade bottle in but we can bring a water bottle in, and it has nothing to do with the contents of the bottle?”), I took the bottles and was going to walk them back to the van. The security lady quietly told us to stuff them in the bottom of the backback and go ahead.

And finally, if the keys in my pocket set off the metal detector, she never mentioned it. If they didn’t, why is the metal detector there? We’ve had questions about Wonderland security a couple of times before, and I’m in the process of writing an email to Wonderland guest services to that effect.