... if you guessed Twitter, you're brilliant!

In the past 12 hours, Twitter has brought me this news first:

• local fire at a plastic factory (I wondered what that strange smell was ...)


• Australian Rules Football player leaving MY team and moving on to another state (sob sob)


• death of Patrick Swayze (RIP. And that surname is really hard to type).

Hours later, these stories were broadcast by TV stations and discussed on other social media forums like Facebook.

That's part of my respect for Twitter. I bump into many people who still poo-poo it. But hey, 140 characters is all you need to let me know there's a fire in my neighbourhood, or that a former heart throb is no longer with us ...

Just when did I get scared of the show rides?

... as a teen, I thought roller coasters, the mad mouse, gravitron and all the other crazy rides were FUN! I liked being fooled into thinking I was going off the rails / being held against the side of a wall by gravity like a glob of cake mix / having the bejesus scared out of me.

I'd fall out of the ride, walk around dizzily, and have a breathless giggle with friends. Then queue up for more.

But I can't take it anymore.

I clutch onto metal bars so hard my hands freeze up. I don't think it's funny when the ride controller decides to speed things up, or give us 'another round'. I think about all the reported ride accidents I've seen in the newspapers (granted, over many years ..) I always seem to smell smoke ...

When did it change?

When did I become Ms Cautious, the person not-able-to-understand-that-rides-were-made-this-way and it's all just good fun?

It's show time in Adelaide. My family goes every year, and increasingly it's a case of me standing around, nervously watching my kids whizzing around on rides.

But they have smiles on their faces. They have goofy laughs. They swap war stories about how they were sure they were going off the edge!

Maybe .. when I'm 70 ... I'll get my crazy groove back? I'll say: to hell with it, and raise my hands in the air on a rollercoaster.

Maybe not.