Character Confession: No Fair, The Here’s Your Sign Version

Yep, Saturday. Time to bare my soul with Character Confessions.

 

 

 

(Please note, although I’m not a fair go-er, this is written in tongue-in-cheek. Mostly.)

If you, my non-Ohio friends, don’t hear from me after this post, please alert someone important. I’ve most likely been tied to a pole and forced to participate in the one thing that will always keep me from ever being accused of being a home grown Ohioan.

I. Hate. The. Fair.

Where I live we have a fair about five miles down the road that is apparently the longest running fair in the county. When we moved here from Upstate New York it was all about “the fair.” We moved during the week of the fair and the questions weren’t about where we were from but, “are you going to the fair?”

When I announced the first year, and the second, then the third, and the fourth, and yes the fifth, sixth and now seventh year that I hate the fair and do not want to go, you can’t even describe the looks I would receive. It was as if I spoke in a foreign language. They don’t get my anti-fair lifestyle. These are people who go every day. Take vacation days. School systems revolve around the fair schedule.

I’m not kidding.

What is it about the fair?

1. I’m a loner. I like my life quiet and without fanfare. Fairs aren’t quite conducive to that.

2. I’m a princess snob. I don’t like being in hot sun for hours on end with weird smells. I don’t enjoy parking five miles away and giving up my husband’s paycheck for a sausage sandwich and a drink. I don’t like the dirt, the trampled grass and the farm animal smells. I grew up with skunks leaving their trail so I’d like to think I paid my dues.

3. My stomach can’t handle the food. I think as a vendor when you sign off on providing a service at the fair you promise to dip it in lard and grease. Five times. Oh my stomach can’t take it. My mom loves the fried dough. I like it, but not a whole piece and not to go to all that fanfare (HA) for the greasy treat.

4. And then there’s the people. I don’t need to see couples walk down the path with their hands in each other’s back pockets. I don’t need to hear screaming kids, I can get that at Wal-Mart where it is air conditioned, thank you very much. I’m not interested in hearing teenagers try to impress each other with the world record attempt of the most “F” words used in a sentence—and I don’t mean “Fair.” I also have zero interest in putting my family in rides that are put up and taken back down time and time again. In my mind it’s done in a rush by workers that seem to be characterized on Criminal Minds. It’s a generalization but I have trust issues.

Here is what I can get on board with when it comes to the fair. I think it was a 1995 recording of comedian Bill Engvall talking about the fair. I still cry I laugh so hard. He wonders why in the middle of the fair is a spa vendor—and his pitch is that he’s just giving them away. Don’t they always say that? The thin man juggling all the snacks with the very large woman wielding a cotton candy and fried butter. Classic.

There you have it. I’m a bitter, non-fair going, princess snob that would rather hear about the fair from Bill Engvall.

 

 

 

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