When I was twelve years old, I snuck a copy of The Amityville Horror to my room and read the whole thing in a day. Then I couldn’t sleep.
I love ghost stories. And then I hate them. That night I woke up and left my room with the intention of going upstairs to sleep on the couch, where I would… I don’t know … get a heads up earlier if something supernatural was going on.
Okay, I confess: I give money to panhandlers.
The reason is simple: I don’t like how it feels to avoid eye contact when I pass someone asking for help. I decided if I can hand over a buck without fumbling through my purse, if I feel safe, and am not enticing anyone to cross traffic, I’m going to give away money when asked.
I’m totally nearsighted, so clever signs don’t sway me. If the person isn’t too scary – not brandishing a machete, in other words – his appearance doesn’t matter, whether he’s sitting in a wheelchair, or dressed in a suit with a Maserati parked around the corner.
Thank you, thighs.
Sixteen year-old me would have never dreamed I’d one day appreciate you. I’ve always thought of you as a tad oversized. Thirty or so years ago, I was consistently pissed that you wouldn’t fit well into a reasonably sized pair of Levi’s 501s. Today, it was your muscle and sinew and bone that carried me across the finish line of my latest half marathon.
While we’re at it, I’d like to say thanks to you heart and lungs. I don’t know why you’ve stuck it out all these years, and done so well, but I appreciate it. I would like to apologize for my lack of attention to nutrition and fitness earlier in life and any effect it may have had on you.
There aren’t any words to explain the smoking thing, guys. I apologize profusely for that and promise to let a good long time pass before you ever have to deal with that nonsense ever again. I would say ‘you’ll never have to deal with it again,’ but I made a deal with frontal cortex: if we all last another four and a half decades, we give ourselves permission to pick the habit back up (between you and me, lungs, it’s likely that frontal cortex will be slowing down by then. She’ll probably forget our promise in favor of taking up puzzles with cats on them or something. I wouldn’t worry).
I lived in the dorms for a semester in college. My roommate and I acquired a mottled rust and orange colored shag carpet remnant to cover the tile. The cinder block walls had been painted aquamarine. Somebody made light of the color by taping a paper puffer fish to the door – one of those cheap decorations they might hang at a grocery store to herald a Hawaiian days promotion. The fish was stolen within a week.
The room was probably the most depressingly hideous space on the planet, which didn’t bother my roommate as much as my inability to properly decorate my side.
“There’s no theme over there. Nothing matches,” she said.
This was true, but in my defense, throughout most of the rest of my life there had been a distinct lack of burnt umber and turquoise hues with which to work. I was out of my element.
And there was the fact that I hadn’t realized one was supposed to decorate a dorm room.
My boyfriend snapped to with one of his brilliant comebacks.
“Of course everything matches over here,” he said. “It has to. There’s at least one item of every color. Anything that comes in here is bound to match something else.”
It was totally MIke’s idea to invite my Grandma to move in, and it wasn’t until she did that I realized I hadn’t ever been able to spend any time with her while I was growing up. In fact, I didn’t know her at all. As we helped her unpack her stuff, I came across one of those little ceramic spoon rests someone had placed on the stove. It said “Betty’s Kitchen,” and I thought: “the hell it is.” This could go wrong really fast.
I didn’t know what to expect from our arrangement. Would she try to assume the position of supreme matriarch of the household? Be overbearing and bossy? That’s my job.
I didn’t have to worry. Grandma could be assertive, but more often she was playful. She and the boys were co-conspirators in slipping table scraps to the dog, something they resorted to practically every evening after ruining their dinner. She always had a private stash of chocolate and popsicles she was happy to share with the boys.
I’m never sure when I pass someone running in an event if I should say “good job,” or “keep it up” or something like other runners say to me when they pass – which is a far more likely scenario. I always credit their encouragement to the fact that I look like I’m about to fall over dead and they probably want to see if I’ll respond, just to make sure they don’t have to flag down someone with a defibulator.
I do pass other runners on occassion. The difference is that the person passing me could be anyone from a lithe, 20-something college track star to a senior citizen, but the person I’m likely to pass – my “road kill” in running vernacular – is someone who looks to be further along on the spectrum of risk for myocardial infarction than I. I worry about coming across as a condescending jerk; panting “keep going, you can make it,” as I pass slowly enough for there to be an awkward pause if the person doesn’t respond.
So, it’s a hundred and freakin’ who knows how many degrees outside, and inside we’re starting to make each other crazy. I think part of the problem is my kids only unplug from the matrix long enough to make demands, eat all our food, or yell at each other. The other part of the problem is bugs.
Little, smelly, flying bugs infested my house last weekend and whether they hatched in here or they’re crawling in some minuscule hole somewhere to evade the heat, I don’t know, but I think they’re going to cost me my sanity.
We came home last weekend on one of those overfull flights in a teeny airplane that underscore how someone missed the memo about the hoards more people commuting between Boise and Seattle than can be comfortably accommodated. We stopped downtown on our way home for a late lunch.
The place was new, and trendy, with lots of blond wood and brushed metal, cement floors, heavy, metal barstools and tall tables. We’d been unable to get a table the first few times we’d come. Now, months after it opened, at 3 pm on a Sunday, sans kids, we didn’t have to wait for lunch. I climbed onto my barstool and realized after a moment that a. my feet weren’t actually resting on anything, and b. this made me feel like a third grader.
Some two or three decades ago my freckled skin and I became good friends with Hawaiian Tropic, SPF 4 in my pursuit of the teen ideal of beauty. Despite my determination to transform my natural skin tone from its normal translucent hue that would have been coveted in Victorian-era England, I never really tanned. In the years since I have learned to balance my grudge against the lotion industry and its failure to deliver on promises of bronze perfection, with my disdain for my inherited pallor.
Sometime several months ago, I absent-mindedly picked at patch of dry skin on the left side of my nose, creating a small sore that stayed for weeks. A scab would form, which would wash off in the shower, or slough off when I ran and rubbed the sweat off my face with my sleeve.
The kids were astonished this year when I suggested we see the new Batman movie instead of going to the fair. They stood astride their bikes, staring gap-mouthed at me. They couldn’t believe I would cancel the FAIR.
“This just ruins my day,” Colin said. I hastily added movie candy and a trip to the arcade to the package.
Not only do the kids love the fair, I love the fair. Or I HAVE loved the fair. Every year in the weeks leading up to the fair, I excitedly point out the colorful trucks of unassembled carnival rides queued up in the fairgrounds parking lot we pass on our way to the grocery store.
“Look,” I say, taking my hands off the wheel to clap excitedly “the fair, The Fair, THE FAIR!”
For the past several years, a trip to the fair has been my birthday present. I love wrapping my hands around that first beer and corn dog, then dragging my family around to look at every single exhibit in the expo building: the oversized produce, the amateur photography, the carvings, the quilts, the jars of canned peaches. This is followed by a trip to the animal barn to appease anyone tired of the aforementioned expo displays of agricultural expertise and pining over future carnival rides and games. After rows of guinea pigs, chickens, rabbits and the chick incubator, I can usually stretch the visit out to include the horse and llama stables.
In the days before kids, and even when they were still very young, we could skip the rides and games altogether. These were the years when my love of the fair was at its peak. It was wholesome and inexpensive.
The Fair and I also have a debauched history. For a teen in the 80s, the fair was an easy place to get away with mischief fueled by a fast food soda cup filled an unhealthy ratio of diet coke to Jack Daniels. It was open late, teeming with other teenagers, and someplace my parents thought was safe enough to leave me unsupervised.
The Fair and I matured together and it became an inexpensive date for my husband and me in the days when we couldn’t afford most other forms of entertainment. As our household discretionary income grew we still enjoyed the Fair.
When our kids came along, we did what we always do and dragged them along. We liked measuring their height against the ruler posted at the ticket booth. We said no to cotton candy and all the peddlers pawning plastic crap. We said yes to those few carnival rides the kids were tall enough to enjoy. We returned home, happily sunburned and exhausted.
Somehow we’ve graduated from buying a handful of carnival tickets to buying the all-you-can-ride, non transferable, wrist bands for our kids. Although we are well beyond the time when we couldn’t put two coins together and walk to the convenience store for a candy bar, the expense makes me itch.
Now a trip to the fair means we rush through the displays of grandma’s cookie recipe and the 800 pound pumpkin to stand in the shade-free, sour-smelling trampled grass, watching our kids wait in a 25-minute line for a three-minute ride.
Access to the carnival rides is through the carnival games with the carnival carnies, which is another problem. The boys love the games and won’t believe they’re rigged. What’s more, kiddie games at the fair have cultivated our children with easy winnings from early on so that they’ll always believe they’re capable of hitting a little balloon with a dart. The games offer prizes like live goldfish that parents get to lug around in sealed, plastic baggies for the rest of the afternoon. Said plastic baggies tend to cook the little fish in the full sun, so the afternoon ends with Mike and me certain we’ve been consigned to hell for abetting animal cruelty.
With so much to offer, the fair entry fee and expensive wrist bands are non refundable, which is not usually a problem. Two years ago, though, we dragged our foreign exchange student along with us for this uniquely American experience. By “uniquely American,” I mean: “I don’t know for sure if they have county fairs or the equivalent in Europe or if they just gather regularly dancing around maypoles and eating turkey legs and jousting.” Even with the advanced discount tickets I purchased, five fair entries, wristbands and dinner for all of us cost roughly the same amount as my first car.
I dragged everyone through the expo exhibits and the small animal barn. Then, in an attempt to out-run what looked like an incoming storm, we skipped the horse stables and went straight to the big Ferris wheel. From there we’d be able to see the whole city, and impress our foreign guest with the juxtaposition of vistas of the Boise River to one side with a five-lane, sidewalk-less arterial roadway littered with back lit marquees and broad parking lots to the other.
We waited in line for our requisite 25 minutes as the wind picked up. The kids were complaining of being hungry, but the fair would be open for several more hours on this last night of the season and we could break later for corndogs and elephant ears.
At the point we were entering an undersized gondola on the oversized Ferris wheel, I heard what I thought was a train approaching. I saw the carney’s face turn pale. We turned and saw a wall of dust barreling down the fairway. It pushed banners and entire canopies ahead of it in a cloud of dust. I turned back and looked up at the ride we were about to board and saw it shimmy. Startled faces looked over the edge of their respective gondolas at us on the platform.
“Everybody off!” the carney yelled as he strong armed us back from what now looked like a brightly lit deathtrap. We obliged, ducking flying paraphernalia and entire tents to make our way back to our car through the torrent. No fair food, no $7 beer, our expensive wristbands completely unused. We stopped at a convenience store on the way home to get ice cream. Our exchange student to this day fails to see the attraction of the Fair.
It’s about that time my love of the Fair began to evaporate. I suspect Mike’s interest has long been feigned for my benefit.
Maybe some day when the kids are out of the house, or no longer interested or available to hang out with us (and hopefully have their own respective sources of income), Mike and I will be able to the Fair that I remember loving. This year, however, nearby forest fires have created spectacular sunsets and an atmosphere reminiscent of the 2008 Beijing Olympics. The smoke plays havoc with Mike’s allergies, and I’m unwilling to plop down a small fortune for the experience. The Fair has become an expensive , unfulfilling flirtation. The affair is over.
Besides, Christian Bale is my new crush.
