Hemal Patel pointed his cellphone camera skyward toward 5-year-old daughter Evelyn and sister Dhara Patel as they twirled high above the Six Flags America amusement park in Maryland on the Wonder Woman Lasso of Truth swing ride.

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“It’s crazy she would go on this one,” Patel said to his sister’s boyfriend, as his camera’s eye trained on joy he couldn’t see but wanted to document nonetheless.

I closely watched the father witness his little girl testing her boundaries in the name of fun. The scene rang familiar and true.

I had once been that very dad, standing in a very similar way as I watched my then-9-year-old daughter, Selena, take that first ride to the sky.

Now, here I was taking in the final moments of what has been a source of lasting memories for millions of people in

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