fair play

I'm going to a fair this weekend--I hope it's like the one I went to as a kid. That one was an agricultural fair (because I grew up in a seriously rural part of Connecticut), so along with the corn dogs and the Tilt-a-Whirl, there were long low buildings full of prize cows, sheep, pigs and chickens, a tractor pull, a horse pull (the horses were pulling, not being pulled) and a petting zoo where you could milk a goat. I also vaguely remember a big building full of crafts and baked goods that had been entered for competition--but I wasn't too interested in that as a kid, because as far as I was concerned, if I didn't get to eat any of the pies, I didn't care what color ribbon they got.

I always went to the fair with our close friends and neighbors the Starrs--their kids, Emmy and Sarah, were two and four years older than me, respectively, and we'd been playing together since before I could even sit up on my own. We spent a lot of time together when I was little, and they were two of my closest friends. They're both married now, and Sarah has a little girl. That is completely surreal. Anyway, when we were kids, one set of parents or the other (god bless 'em) would chaperone us around the fairgrounds in the brutal August heat and wait patiently while we whizzed around on the more child-friendly rides (MOON BOUNCE!) and got covered in calf slobber at the petting zoo (my personal favorite part--seeing how much dirt I could reasonably acquire in the course of the afternoon). Then we'd all troop over to the food part of the fair for an ice cream sundae apiece. It was the best.

I'm sure I'll have a lot of fun at the fair tomorrow, but I know it won't be the same as when I was a kid. I'm a lot more finicky now, and I'll be noticing the crowds and the heat and the smells instead of making a beeline for the merry-go-round. And while I hope there are calves I can scratch behind the ears and fried dough and cotton candy and ice cream, and maybe a ride or two if they look like they won't make me barf...it's just going to be different. If I had a dollar for every time this month I've wished that I was eight years old again, I could buy my own fair.