Don’t Wear Flip-Flops to the County Fair

Memories are made. Lessons are learned.

            Do we go to the county fair to people watch or to win things we would never consider buying at any other time or place? $5.00 for three darts and a small stuffed animal. You are always just $5.00 away from the next bigger animal. $20.00 gets you a toy that is bigger than your kid. People hawking junk and I can’t tell the kid no. $4.00 won my son two live goldfish. Wal-Mart then sold me $24.00 worth of gravel, fish food, a plastic plant, and a bowl. We do this for the memories, because we cannot come back to the joy of a three year boy’s face ever again.

            The smells of fried foods lure us in with their siren like aromas. You can put ANYTHING on a stick. You can deep fry ANYTHING. I will eat ANYTHING. Outdoor dining in its most primal fried form. For every dollar spent on carnival food I need one dollar worth of Zantac to kill the heartburn later that night. The prior year’s lesson is always conveniently forgotten.

            There was a tent full of starving barbers right next to a tent full of people with mullets. Some guy was selling cheap knock-offs of Slap Chop and Graty (I did not even think that was possible). Apparently fashion sense can go out the window for the fair. At times it felt as if we were surrounded by clowns. Please know your body, and then dress accordingly. This must be like a job fair to all the people in the sticks—the carnie lifestyle is actually a dream for some. We saw people that only brushed their side teeth. Maybe it was their yearly convention, or maybe this is the premiere toothless social event of the year. Excuse me sir, those are not VIP invitations to the fair, they are ride tickets and anyone can buy them . . . kind of like toothbrushes.

            I let my son ride on a Ferris Wheel that I was nervous just standing under. He ate food off of the ground. He wanted his picture taken next to a big “mud pie.” My quick “no” was followed by a fatherly definition of what road apples were and why the horse left them there. He ran around in the animal barns, almost like he was lost and was looking for a stall of his own. We saw family and the kids played like Mixed Martial Arts warriors for as long as they could hold their heads up.

            The place sounds like a bad dream, but deep down I think we all like the dust and grit in the air, the flashing lights, and the loud music. Will we return? You better believe it . . . every single year. Our memories were made and our bonds were strengthened, but from here on out we are going to wear real shoes. Our feet were black and crunchy after a few hours and left a ring in the tub when we got home (and put the fish in their new home).

            Lesson learned: Don’t wear flip-flops to the county fair.

Bald Guys Shouldn’t Drive Cars with Sunroofs

My three week break from school has been a blessing. It has given me time to do some things that just needed to be done: connect, disconnect, and reconnect. 

Passing three weeks with a three year old can be like a prison sentence, or an excellent opportunity to reminisce and pass on the fibers of what make you you.  We connected during trips of discovery to cultural, historic, and natural areas. We got to swim. We rode in boats. We went to an animal park (he was fascinated with the size of buffalo turds).  He showed me what he called “owwie flowers” –the rest of us know them as cacti. One night I even spent 40 minutes trying to answer his question of “Why does the moon keep following us?”

Getting away from school, the house and the regular “routines and rituals” of our everyday existence took us to many exciting places and put over one thousand miles on the truck in the process. Being able to water the plants, feed the birds, and just drive away is somewhat liberating. The bills will still be coming to the house, but we won’t be there to pick them up. It is nice to drop off of the grid and live without a schedule on occasion. It becomes easy to see why so many of us are on depression and anxiety medications . . . the lives we live are not really ours. We belong to bill collectors and a never ending pile of laundry.

On a daily basis we deal with dozens of people. Some are strangers, some are acquaintances, and a few we even consider friends. Then there are the people you can never see often enough, the people on the short list we keep of lifelong friends that help keep us grounded when we get too uppity and pick us up when we hurt. Aunts, Uncles, cousins, and friends I consider brothers were all seen during this break. Our conversations these days turn to kids and our heads may have more salt than pepper, but these are the people that we really know and trust. One young lady found that she can still make my heart dance and sizzle like bacon on a skillet just as it did for her twenty years ago. It was time to reconnect with “my people.”

These breaks also allow us to learn about things we may have missed the first time we experienced them. To remember that, when allowed to be, we are all just grown-up kids on the inside and that we all need to go out and play on occasion. There may be physical differences we need to keep in mind as we age and relive our youth. Tomorrow you will be sore. You may need to stop for a nap. Happy Hour is not when you get to watch cartoons.  And us bald guys should not drive cars with sunroofs