A Fair Chance

I realize that this is a bit of a contrarian viewpoint, but I hate the fair.  Seriously, I hate the fair.  I don’t just dislike it.  I hate hate hate hate it.  It’s gross.  It’s expensive.  It’s dangerous.  And it’s gross.  I feel the same way about fair season as I do about flu season:  I try my best to avoid it every year, but eventually one of my kids is going to suck me in.  And despite having exhibit 1, exhibit 2, and exhibit 3 in my fair-hating defense, people still react to my fair hating opinion as if I told them I hate puppies. (For the record, I do not hate puppies).  Last night, against my better judgment, I agreed to meet Rach and the three little kids (Scarlett, Jax, and Stella) at the fair.  Rach and I agreed that it would be best if we didn’t tell the three big kids (Tori, Gavin, and Cole) where we were going.  Even though they were all at basketball practice and wouldn’t have been able to go anyway, they were sure to be jealous and angry.  And living under the same roof as three angry jealous teenagers is not my idea of a picnic (But it might be worth it just to hear, for irony’s sake, “That’s not fair!”).  So I left straight from work to the Ladson Fairgrounds, which as far as I can tell has absolute zero usefulness the other 350 days out of the year.  I guess that’s how long it takes for the fair smell to go away.  As I pulled into the park the parking attendant directed me into the ‘Corn Dog’ parking lot.  I called Rach to see where she was, and she informed me that she was in the ‘Cotton Candy’ parking lot.  Now I am not a parking lot scientist, but I would imagine that normal parking lots on planet earth are separated into distinct numbers and letters so that a person would be able to easily navigate their way through the parking lot.  For example, if I pulled into section 3B and Rach pulled into section 5F, I could reasonably deduce her location using my knowledge of both the alphabet and the English numbering system.  BUT HOW ON EARTH DO I FIND THE COTTON CANDY PARKING LOT IF I AM STANDING IN THE CORN DOG PARKING LOT?!?!?!  Am I supposed to guess?  Did these geniuses organize the parking lot sections based on fat calories?  At least that would make some sense.   If you started in the ‘Bottled Water’ parking lot you could make your way right up to the gate past the ‘Fried Butter’ parking lot.  But alas, this was not the case.  Instead, I wandered aimlessly from section to section in what I now refer to as “Type II Diabetes” Parking Lot until finally Racheal called and said she was already inside the gate.  My fair experience was not off to a great start.  Things smoothed over a little bit once we got inside though.  We met up with some friends, Jax and Scarlett were running around riding rides (This may come as a shocker, but I don’t particularly care for the rides at the fair.  You want me to pay you $20 so I can hop on a hunk of sheet metal that you assembled in the middle of the night for a little more than minimum wage?  Umm, no thanks.  But my kids want to ride!) Even Stella seemed to be legitimately enjoying herself.  However it is pretty tough keeping a toddler in her stroller when the sky is lit up like Redneck Las Vegas.  She wanted to run around just like her brother and sister.  After all, why should they be the only ones that have a chance to win the prize known in the medical community as Hep-C.  So I spent the next hour chasing Stella around, making sure she didn’t go where she wasn’t supposed to go, and making sure she didn’t touch anything that she wasn’t supposed to touch; which was everything.  The fair is not solely about riding rides that spin you around until your eyes pop out of your head and you want to vomit. It’s also about gorging yourself on fried food until you want to vomit.  Some of the gourmet fair cuisine that we ate: chicken wings, pulled pork, a corndog, sweet potato fries, an elephant ear (which are not actually made from real elephants, who knew?), a Stromboli, a cinnamon roll the size of my head, fried cookie dough, and we washed it all down with a 327oz souvenir cup of lemonade. ‘Merica.  Apart from the rides and the food, I’m not sure what else you are supposed to do at the fair.  We walked around for a while.  There was a band.  And a flower exhibit.  And a lady riding a horse.  And a bunch of games that you could play to win an inflatable smurf, but that was about it.  And I couldn’t even tell which smurf it was.  It wasn’t Papa Smurf, or Smurfette, or Hefty, or Brainy, or even Vanity.  It looked like a generic smurf that stayed in the background.  Who wants to win an inflatable smurf that isn’t even a main character?  Pfft.  But I digress.  By now we had been walking around for about an hour and Stella was too tired to walk, but not tired enough to stay in her stroller, which basically meant I had to hold her for the rest of the night.  Being that it was already past Stella’s bedtime (and mine too), I volunteered to take Stella home to give her a bath and get her in bed.   A small part of me feels guilty for using Stella as my ticket to escape.  But a bigger, much smarter part of me thinks that is silly, and left before you could say ‘clogged artery’.  During the 25 minute walk back to the Corn Dog Parking Lot, Stella would point at anything that was lit up (which is everything) and smile.  She’d talk to me, then she’d talk to the lights.  Then she’d say something that made herself laugh and I’d laugh with her.  When we got outside the gate and there were no more lights to laugh at, she put her head on my shoulder and patted my back.  The walk back to the car couldn’t be long enough.  I even slowed down.  At that moment and that moment only, I thanked God for the fair.