The decision maker

An evening at the county fair

I have, once again, run out of money at the county fair.

In fact—has there ever been a time when I didn’t run out of money, regardless of how much I brought?

My most enduring childhood memory of the county fair was not having enough money. There were four of us kids, our parents in their mid-20s with student loan debt and mortgage and car payments, and only enough for admission tickets, one elephant ear, one ride each, and maybe a game or two for my baseball-y brothers who had a pretty good shot at winning certain feats that required an accurate arm.

I worried the whole time we were there. I was afraid there wouldn’t be enough money for me to do what I wanted. I was afraid for my parents, who got quieter and quieter as more and more money was spent. And yet, it was my absolute favorite time of year. It always nearly coincided with my September birthday, and so I felt a particular sense of excitement about it. It was an occasion, a reason to celebrate, a topographical anomaly in the predictable undulations of life.

In middle school, my parents stopped coming to the fair, and the event took on a different tone. To be a teenager at the fair is to be on display. The rides are incidental, the food ignored. It had the same sort of buzz as a high school football game, but with an edge—the lines were not clearly drawn, the atmosphere was not controlled. I have no memory of ever actually meeting up with anyone other than my same-aged girlfriends there, but the implication—of being watched by others, classmates and strangers alike, was a singular thrill.

Recently, I’ve become aware of arriving on the other side of being noticed. As a soon-to-be-36-year-old, I know I’m still on the youngish side, but with two kids and little time to think about how I appear to the world (my main focus being on choosing the outfit that is most likely to weather the day’s many challenges), I’ve started to assume an air of invisibility or at least forget-ability. I feel eyes move over me, through me. This could very easily be a function of my ego, or of all the articles I’ve read that have told me this would happen in a tone both sorrowful and welcoming.

It is both a relief and a blow. I walk around our county fair now, hundreds of miles from where I grew up, pushing a stroller, carrying a bag of cotton candy, counting my last dollars to see if it’s enough for a lemonade to share. In the grandstands, I scan for exits, worry about guns, worry about a human stampede, worry about the toxic fumes wafting from the overheating engines of the truck pull into my children’s lungs, the deafening sound damaging their hearing.

They don’t know any of this, of course. Or do they?

They, as far as I can tell, are thrilled. They’re talking a mile a minute, pointing at everything, stroking bunnies with fingers extended through wires, admiring blue, green, and orange tractors, gasping at the Ferris wheel, contemplating the goldfish-ping-pong game. We should have a goldfish, shouldn’t we? I launch into an intentionally laborious description of what it’s like to clean a fish tank. It works—we move on, their joy unabated. I feel that old excitement like a gentle breeze against my cortex.

It turns out there’s not quite enough for a lemonade, but the vendor lets me have it anyway. I give him my last dollars, then we go back to watch the shined and souped-up trucks strain against the Decision Maker sled, until our ears are ringing and our attention wanes. Then we slip away, just as night falls, and no one notices a thing.

Sigh.