Name: Lovely Marie B.

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“NO CHILDREN ALLOWED” BY CARLEY LEE-LAMPSHIRE

Carley Lee-Lamshire

Their half-toothed grins fill many people’s lives with happiness, but to Carley Lee-Lampshire,
children are nothing more than a necessary evil.

A senior studying journalism at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, Lee-Lampshire looks back

on her summers spent at the beach with fondness. This fondness is lost when she recalls all the
screaming children.

Jolly Rodger Amusement Park, with its water rides and coasters, tempts tourists from their hotel
rooms in Ocean City, MD. Upon entering, guests are greeted by Choo-Choo trains, cotton candy
machines producing puffs of purple and pink sugar clouds, and Lee-Lampshire.

“Kids ruin this place,” she says.

Grumbling behind any number of stands, from ice cream to funnel cake booths, Lee-Lampshire
bitterly waits on parents and their “spawn.”

Luck afforded Lee-Lampshire the opportunity to live in OC, where she met Stef Broetsky.
Broetsky’s family owns the Jolly Rodger Park on 32nd Street. Every year, high school would
close its doors to summer and Broetsky would invite Lee-Lampshire down to live and work with
her.

“Who would say no to living at the beach with your best friend?” asks Lee-Lampshire.

For three straight summers, Lee-Lampshire joined Broetsky at the beach. She described the wave
pool where water would gently sway even overweight parents back and forth while they slept on
their giant inflatable beds. Towels drenched the pavement in bright colors, depicting beach
scenes. The clouds overhead were smothered by huge green tubes filled with fast-paced water
and visitors looking for a thrill.

Lee-Lampshire’s least favorite ride can be found deep inside the park. Customers climb into a
harness and are pulled back until they are off the ground at an angle of at least 150 feet. The
harness is released and the riders are swung into the air a couple of times until their momentum
is lost.

Parents usually succumb to their kids’ tantrums and allow them to climb into a harness that
often leads to a pile of vomit.
 “Even from the front of the park I could hear those brats scream,” Lee-Lampshire says. “They
always ask to get off, but it is always too late and the shouting always gives me a headache.”

According to Lee-Lampshire, families visit Jolly Rodger in hopes of an enjoyable day, but you
would be hard-pressed to find a family leaving on a happy note. She says the environment is
filled with stuffed animals, popular gadgets and sugary delights.

It is too much allure when you consider that kids only have one mind set: gimme-gimme-gimme.

“The rides aren’t enough,” Lee-Lampshire says. “Then they want candy or to play a game. I
watch parents empty their wallets and their stores of patience.”

According to Lee-Lampshire, it only gets worse if you are an employee. The prices are like any
other amusement park-ridiculously expensive. When a family has ridden all the rides and finds
itself starving, children exhausted, all it takes is an overpriced cheeseburger to set them off.

“The kids complain all over my counter until they get what they want. The parents, needing
some control over their wallet, will lash out at me over the price of a hot dog,” says Lee-
Lampshire.

For Lee-Lampshire, however it’s all in a day’s work at the Jolly Rodger.

Lee-Lamphire takes off her uniform around 11 p.m. and jumps on her candy-apple red Moped
with Broetsky. They are heading back to Broetsky’s condo to get ready for a night on the
boardwalk. Lee-Lampshire couldn’t be more excited to join crowds in a place where teenagers
swarm and nighttime means no children are allowed.

“I may leave every summer loathing the prospect of babysitting,” says Lee-Lampshire, “but the
beach is worth it. Although it would be nice if they banned kids from there, too.”

On her way out Lee-Lampshire runs into a little girl crying next to a game operated by her
friend, Samad. She stops the Moped to chat until Samad has to turn around and address a new
customer. Lee-Lampshire watches as the toddler wipe boogers across her face.

The scooter’s engine comes alive and moments before Lee-Lampshire pulls out, she grabs a
small bear from Samad’s pile of goodies and hands it to the booger-faced little girl. In awe of
Lee-Lampshire’s bravery, the girl begins to edge closer, arms open and ready for hugs. Off the
clock, Lee-Lampshire rolls her eyes at the gesture and quickly drives off toward the park’s exit
sign.
Name: Alhyzza Hannz C. Salvador

“The Girl Who Survived the Brain-Eating Amoeba”

The hazy glare of another hot morning shone through the blinds when Kali Hardig plopped onto
a gray, floral-patterned couch and waited for the throbbing in her head to subside. It hurt really
bad. Almost as if her long, sun-drenched hair were on fire. Kali, who was then 12 years old,
didn’t even want to get out of bed. “Mama,” she said, “just let me sleep.” Traci, her mother, said
she didn’t want Kloee, her bouncy little Yorkie, up on the couch. Even with the Tylenol and
Motrin, her temperature was still over 103℉. Kali couldn’t hold her gaze. Her eyes rolled back
into her head.

She had an appointment for 3 p.m., but around noon, Traci called her husband, Joseph. “I got
her in, but I don’t know if she’s going to make it that long.”

Traci’s mom, Linda, had driven over from her house and the two laid Kali on a bed of wet towels
in the back of her white Saturn. Linda sped up I-30 (how fast, nobody knew — she never looked
down) to the emergency room at the Arkansas Children’s Hospital in Little Rock.

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It was just a day earlier that Kali and two of her friends had piled into the car to go to Willow
Springs Water Park, a warm, muddy, man-made pond about halfway between home and Little
Rock. She loved the water and begged to go swimming with dolphins on family vacations to
Panama City Beach. The park had a big baby-blue water slide that came 400 feet down a hill,
carousel swings encircled a mock sunken ship. Families barbecued at shaded picnic tables that
ringed the water as familiar tunes — “Desperation Samba,” “Yellow Submarine,” “Baby Love”
— pumped out of tinny gray speakers.

At the ER, Traci made it clear that this was no ordinary flu. When the doctors asked about doing
a spinal tap to rule out meningitis, Traci told them Kali was terrified of needles, but Kali didn’t
flinch as the nurse explained how they were going to stick an IV in her arm. Another doctor
extracted a sample of cerebrospinal fluid from the horsetail of nerves that extend from the brain
down the spine.

Dale Donnell, MT(ASCP) White blood cells and a Naeglaria organism at the center.

The sample went to Tameka Reed, a technician at the hospital microbiology lab. What she saw
was not bacteria or fungi, but a pinkish scrum of white blood cells clustered around a white blob.
The head of the department had never seen it before; it looked like Naegleria fowleri. The
hospital had diagnosed two previous cases — and two previous deaths. (Though his family had
not made it public, one of those, a 7-year-old boy named Davian Briggs, had swum at the same
water park in 2010.) Despite the unconventional diagnosis, the lab was confident. A call went out
to Dr. Matt Linam, one of the hospital’s infectious disease specialists: They had another case of
primary amebic meningoencephalitis, an acute, rapidly progressive infection that leads to
swelling of the brain. The doctors called the CDC.

The story soon spread — as did the hysteria. The parasite could be anywhere. It was invisible to
the naked eye and it was almost always deadly. There was danger, to be sure, but the panic was
fueled by the three words nearly everyone used to describe the microorganism: brain-eating
amoeba.

Naegleria fowleri thrive in freshwater and, when it’s warm — around 80℉ — they crawl
through mud and sediment to feast on bacteria. They have three forms. The shape-shifting
organism alternates between a round, hard cyst; a single cell with whip-like tail; and a form that
resembles a dragon fruit covered in mouth-shaped suction cups. Swallow one, or even more than
one, and they're harmless because gastric acid inferno burns them to a crisp.

But when the organism gets flushed up your nose, there’s a chance it can attach to the nasal
mucosa, dissolve the barrier, and wander into the brain. From there, the little cellular organism,
about 10 micrometers in diameter, about one-eighth the size of human hair, kicks its two whip-
like flagella and swims up the olfactory nerve. According to Nicole Iovine, an infectious disease
doctor and director of Antimicrobial Management Program at the University of Florida, “It’s like
it’s on a highway direct to the brain.”

Justine Zwiebel / BuzzFeed The Naegleria fowleri begins to work its way through brain cells and
multiply. The organism doesn’t need a host. Scientists call it a free-living amoeba. Humans are
incidental hosts that respond poorly to the intrusion. The organism exploits a weakness in the
body’s defense. By the time the immune system responds to the inflammation, the shape-shifting
amoeba can form into a hardened cyst impervious to white blood cells. The brain begins to swell.
In May of this year, I visit the Hardigs in a Little Rock suburb, where they live in a one-story
ranch bungalow. Traci wears a neon T-shirt and shorts, her hair still short from the last round of
chemo. The next day I meet Joseph, a stocky man with a crew