I'm writing this Thursday night after I got home from the fair, but I'll set this to post on Friday since I already set up a post for Thursday, which I had written on Tuesday. I'm getting better about scheduling posts, but then I feel bad about having an inconsistent timeline. I sometimes have insomnia, which gives me time to blog, and then I can set up multiple posts with time in between. Particularly weeks that I know I will be busy, it seems to work better.
So, anyway, I'm home from the fair. I went with a friend who I've known awhile, but we haven't really done anything together in the past few months, so it was an excellent time to catch up. Our motto for the day: "What happens at the fair stays at the fair." Raunchiness and hedonism were definitely apparent.
The fair does have rides, and it has a lot of animals (think 4-H), fruit/vegetable/flower displays, lots of exhibits (like infomercial stuff), all sorts of fair food, and a few different forms of entertainment on stages.
I went once with my mom as a teenager to the fair. She got free admission tickets, and of course everything at the fair is overpriced; thus, we weren't allowed to eat the food there or go on the rides. That leaves us walking through every exhibit hall and all of the animal barns. If there was a performance going on (like a beginning magician), we watched that. The thing is, the exhibits and animals bore me pretty quickly. There are seriously about 100 chickens/hens/roosters in cages, and after you've seen 5, they kind of all start looking alike. Infomercial booths do nothing for me. So although I technically "went to the fair" when I went with my mom, I didn't get to do anything I wanted to do and walked around in bored misery while every other kid my age seemingly got to go on the rides and eat cow chip cookies.
So when my friend and I went 3 years ago, doing what WE wanted to do was a real concept to me. I can ride on the rides as much as I want and eat what I want and not see every exhibit booth? Awesome. So I did.
And we did that today as well. It helps when what you like to do at the fair jives with what the other person likes to do at the fair. My husband? He doesn't like rides, and he doesn't like booths, and he doesn't really like animals, and he really has little appreciation for fair food, and he doesn't like crowds. So basically the whole fair experience is torture to him. Of course he'd go if I asked him, but I don't really want to see him puking his guts out after the second ride. My friend and I both really like the rides, a cursory look at the animals, and eating, so we're like the best fair buddies ever.
Yep, we went on this. It's not like you can find just ANYone to go on this ride with you.
Since the last time we went, they set up the concept of scannable bracelets for rides. It's like those shopper reward cards. They track everything you partake in. The employees tell you that they're really neat because if you can't find your kid, at customer service they can pull up the bracelet number and see what was the last ride that the kid rode. Just like they tell you that if you put the shopper reward card on your keychain, they'll mail you your keys if you ever lose them. We know the truth. We know they want to analyze our behaviors as customers on an aggregated basis.
We rode 26 rides, and we rode one of the roller coasters twice. We went on at least 3 rides that went upside down. I don't mind going upside down, but I'm not terribly fond of hanging upside down for more than a couple of seconds. When you start hitting five seconds, the blood starts rushing to your head, you start wondering how strong the restraints are, you can feel like you're losing things off your body. Since the rides opened late due to weather, it took a while for the crowds to come. So for the first couple of hours, we breezed through a ton of rides. Then as school let out, the teenagers started to come in like mad. I do love observing teenagers. Did you know Homecoming date planning is well under way? Isn't it funny that people text each other to ask out a Homecoming date? So a girl gets a text at the fair while she's with her friends in line for a ride, and then you have 4 other shrieking girls saying, "OMG! OMG! He asked you to Homecoming!" Then the Aeropostale or Hollister-wearing girl with extremely straight hair and skinny jeans jumps up and down.
More Homecoming talk in other lines for rides. In the line for the ferris wheel, there are two girls who look around 13-14 and this tiny boy who looks to be a little brother of one of them. For about 10 minutes in line, he's flicking this Star Wars lighter and being, well, a 10 year old boy. My friend and I are starting to call him the little arsonist. Then we turn around a few minutes later, and he's making out with one of the girls! He's, like, 10! Okay, maybe he was 12 - a very, very young looking 12.
Kids these days....that makes me sound about 4,000 years old.
Anyway, a great time at the fair was had by us both!
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