...(i CANNOT resist a good pun. i have passed this highly irritating quality on to my daughter, however, so you HAVE to like it.)
things i learned while biggling around the fair tonight:
- i have peaked out on my fair experiences as of tonight. there will NEVER be another night like tonight was for a fair...the temperature was PERFECT, it was neither crowded nor vacant (because, really, would you really want to be the ONLY one on a carnival ride? it's like being the punchline to a really sick joke...that everyone but YOU knows already...ew,) and we saved a little bit by going during the week. i was with my wonderful kiddos and a great family, and it was a truly beautiful night. so i'm done now. except i never had a funnel cake...
- there REALLY ARE turkens. i have seen one. i didn't know what i was looking at when i saw this...bird, but apparently, that's what this poor thing was. i just KNEW it was an albino vulture baby. but who am i to argue with the wrangler man wrasslin' the runaway turkey? i will just go with the turken.
- there are moments as a parent that feel very surreal. i realized this first, i think, when i was at sea world a year or so ago, and again this evening, atop the ferris wheel. it's like grown-up deja vu collides with the kid-experience...you're feeling exactly like you did as a child, and yet, you're experiencing it through a parent's eyes. i was feeling exactly how i felt years and years ago on that ferris wheel, but i was also immensely enjoying watching my kids discover the ferris wheel (yes, the babe went on the ferris wheel, too...i noticed at the front of the line that he was too short to ride even with an adult, but i just didn't meet dude's eyes and pushed him on like i was very irritated i even had to ride the damn thing.) it's a very strange combination, and i don't believe it's something that leaves you easily. it's kind of an eerie-yet-peaceful feeling. i'll have to keep working on this discovery. and, btw, ferris wheels are now lit with LED lights. now you know.
- so let's say that you are feeling mighty arrogant that you have, TWICE now, manipulated the carnies to give you a price break on those GAMES they've conveniently placed RIGHT next to the little-kid rides (i'm no dummy!) i mean, let's say you have planned and plotted and maneuvered and scowled and carefully considered and pondered and ho-hummed and stuck your hands in your pockets and come out with just a few fingers to illustrate to your babies just how many dollars you have left and looked like you were about to cry and pinched your kids under the arms to make THEM cry on CUE -- JUST so you can get $.50 off a $3 game!!! and the kids play the game while you smile the whole time and you all walk away with a stuffed fish with crooked eyes that's the size of the child's palm that clearly was recycled from the streets of mobile after mardi gras and you stop like you got hit in the gut BECAUSE...BECAUSE? because YOU were the idiot who paid TWICE to get inside the gates of the E.F.F.I.N.G. fair in the FIRST place. and guess what? i STILL left the gates with COMPLETELY EMPTY pockets. yeah.
- i still REEEEEALLY want to tour around with the carnies for a couple months to see what life is really like behind-the-scenes with these people. it's still REEEEEEALLY hard to meet eyes with some of them...they just know way too much. like exactly what you look like underneath your clothes. or the fact that they made you look at them even though you both know you really didn't want to look up. or how suckers smell...i think i put on haiku deoderant and SJP's "lovely" perfume.
- the fair is still magical, and i was surprised to find that a long absence did not completely sour me away for good. the parental worries of (severe lack of) money, kidnapping, and ferris wheel cars pulling a chitty-chitty-bang-bang or swings unhooking and disappearing like a slungshot rock were not strong enough to keep me from it tonight. perhaps it was the overdose on the fried-food stench, or the drunkenlike stammer dance you do in the carnival snakepit of cords, or the kiddish anticipation at riding the SAME burlap sack you rode on TWENTY-FIVE years ago down the bumpy slide, or the way your kids' cheeks are consistent apples and their eyes reflect the LED LIGHTS, but when life hands you a VERY nice-yet-unexpected perfect evening, you tend to grab onto it and fall in love very quickly.
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