Preface:
I crafted this post last week, teasing it up in an impulse post I published first. This one was pretty much ready to go, but I let it rest after baking, knowing I’d do a once-over with fresh eyes before hitting send.
Last week also witnessed new rounds of horror and upheaval in the Middle East. On Thursday, one of the group text message threads my husband and I are part of started sharing warnings of possible Hamas-led attacks in the U.S. to coincide with Friday the 13th. We did not chime in on the thread, but we did comment privately to each other that there was probably a higher chance of someone shooting up a large crowd at the state fair on Friday the 13th than there was one of these sensationalized Hamas theories coming true.
I was wrong about the date. I was unfortunately right about the shooting.
My mother texted me yesterday asking if I had heard about the shooting at the State Fair of Texas. I hadn’t. I googled. Sure enough: October 14th, 3 injured, the fair evacuated, shooter arrested.
A mere 5 days after we were there.
If there can be a feeling of “dull shock” I’ve come to know it well. That sense of not being surprised something happened yet still experiencing the weight of impact that it did. Over the last few years my emotional radius of proximity to shootings has shrunken — whether it be by association (2022 grocery store shooting in my home town) or location (2023 high school shooting in the neighborhood where we had just move out of), just to name two. There have been shootings in daylight on interstate highways I drive regularly, and one recently at a nearby car dealership. It feels everywhere, all the time.
I am so deeply saddened and disturbed by the level of chronic anger/hatred/selfishness/hopelessness we seem to be carrying around — varieties of despair all pent up behind an ever-shortening fuse with easier access to violently and impulsively (or strategically, in the case of Hamas) “resolve” it. It makes what I stress about in the post below seem even sillier than it already was.
I talk about the memories I choose to make with my daughter, the experiences I want to create for her, so she might cherish them decades from now. Had we gone to the fair Saturday instead of Monday, it likely would have been cooler and slightly less crowded. And we would have had to evacuate and deal with post-traumatic, memory-haunting stress, if not injury or worse.
I don’t know the depths and details of what happened on Saturday or what triggered it. I know I feel relieved and heart broken and scared. As chief protecting officer, my most important and most challenging responsibility is to keep my daughter — and her hope — alive, which these days feels as controllable as our state fair excursion. I’m doing everything I can, and begging the universe for kindness everywhere else.
The fair reopened Sunday.
w.
I had a plan.
We were going to the State Fair of Texas and I was ready. I preplanned the plan, studied the FAQ, and made notes. I had a cheat-sheet to know which must-do things were happening when, and how to track down all those wacky fried food concoctions.
And then, we got there.
We parked in a lot different than the one identified in said plan, so we entered the fair already off course. I kept looking a my cheat-sheet and the printed fair guide. There was a main map with a color-coded numerical system. And then a separate food map, with its own coding system different from the main map. Which is why I had my cheat-sheet, to cross-reference. A mere 30 minutes in, I was cross-eyed.
We did ride the ginormous Ferris wheel first thing. It even stopped at the very top, where we could see the entire fairgrounds. That didn’t help my sense of navigation. My daughter’s eyes, however, beamed with hope.
Planned: 1 | Not planned: 1
I know people who are avid fair-goers. My aunt and uncle go at least three times per season run of the county fair of my hometown. They know which days they can get in cheap with donated canned goods, they scope out their favorite wine and beer pavilions, and study the weather forecast to go on optimum days.
We were rookies for this Texas fair. My husband had gone once many many years ago; I had never been in my 18+ years of living in the state. My daughter got a free ticket from school, and I had a discount code from McDonald’s, so we decided to go. It’d likely be crowded and for sure hot, but I’d have a plan! We’d minimize unnecessary zigzagging across the fairgrounds. We’d be sun-screened, hydrated, and efficient!
There’s an ol’ saying: Know how to make God laugh? Tell him your plans. Same can be said about fair gurus. I think I can still hear them laughing.
Daunted but not defeated, we walked on toward the midway to scratch my daughter’s itch to ride rides. A fun house here, a spinny thing there. I white-knuckled the handle bars more than she did, more than I used to (those high swings go really high and I know too much now). Mom and daughter squealed with delight as the Tilt-a-Whirl tickled our bellies. I was equally thrilled to be sharing with her now the joy I felt on this ride when I was her age.
Once we stopped spinning, we made our way to the first pig race of the day, an event that seems like a fair “right of passage” more than quality entertainment. It demands a lopsided ratio of prep-time to watch-time if you want a decent seat. We thought we scored good ones until the late-comers squatted up along the track. The amusing play-by-play caller/announcer guy made up for the lack of view, rallying up cheering sections for the cleverly named pigs like “Ham-mah Montana” and “Christina Hog-ulera”.
Before and after the pig races we explored the petting zoo. If there’s one thing my daughter loves more than rides, it’s animals, so this was high on our priority list. In all my diligent planning online I learned the fair was now accepting one kind of currency — fair coupons — for food, rides, and activities to simplify things. Great! After snaking a long line to get in, we came upon tables where pet-zoo patrons could buy food to feed the animals. Wouldn’t you know it, cash only. Which we had none. This triggered the pitiful “my-life-is-now-forever-inextricably-ruined” teary-eyed look on my daughter’s face. (If I had a dollar for every time I got that look at a well-intended “fun” experience, I could buy pet food for all fair-goers in the country. <facepalm>) We sauntered on in any way, weaseling ourselves into rare open spots along the fences. My daughter oohed and awed over baby goats, pesky kangaroos, and apple-snacking turtles. Eventually she got food to feed them thanks to generous strangers on their way out. She rationed her new-found cup of grub like her ancestors did during the Depression, and would’ve stayed tending to those critters all day if we’d let her.
Planned: 4 | Not planned: 3
Though the petting zoo was not air-conditioned, it was inside and reasonably ventilated. But I was growing hungry looking at all that kibble, tired of standing, and anxious we were losing time to hit all of our planned to-dos. So we paid forward our remaining pet food to another fair-goer and reentered the sun-scorched midway, now packed with people, strollers, and wagons. Low on heat-tolerance and patience, we settled on splitting a lackluster chicken tender basket, waited for our order, and then beelined it for the climate-controlled coliseum.
To my pleasant surprise, the arena seats we landed to cool down while we snacked just so happened to be seats for an event on my planned list: “The Majesty of the Horse”. Serendipity! The “unicorn” performance dazzled my daughter, while the Canadian women’s horseback riders dazzled me with their sequined saddles and LED-lit costumes. These northern neighbors paraded a Texas-sized American-flag during a toe-tapping routine choreographed to Shania Twain’s “I Feel Like a Woman”. Show-creator and horseman Jerry Diaz wowed the crowd with his expert lasso-bilities, which I admit to not fully grasping until he was almost finished. (I did note the irony that we applauded his cowboy skills on this Indigenous Peoples’ Day, a contrast fresh in my mind after recently hearing Levar Burton speak of watching old westerns as a kid.) The air conditioning turned out to be better than the show, but I was still pleased with our low-effort 2-for-1 win.
Relatively replenished, I revisited the cheat-sheet to see what would be next. The last remaining set-time event didn’t start for another two hours, and while it was tempting to linger in the coliseum, we ventured back out. But all the zig-zagging was catching up with us, and the hottest part of the day remained merciless, depriving us of clouds and breeze. We soon stumbled into the Creative Arts building where we overpaid for bottled water, found the butter sculptures, and enjoyed both the heat reprise and the sole-ful shoe-themed contest winners.
Map in hand, we eventually tracked our way down to the opposite end of the fair grounds for the stunt dog show, short-cutting through another air conditioned exhibit. A good half hour before show start with ample time to claim the perfect spot, my confidence rose that maybe we were doing this right after all. My husband and daughter got settled at the very top of the bleachers which came with back support and a good view. I went off in search of the promised, yes-of-course-we-can-buy-it-near-the-dog-show cotton candy. And of course, there was NO cotton candy to be found except in a $12 lemonade. I couldn’t stomach a second bout of the pitiful “my-life-is-now-forever-inextricably-ruined” look, so I waited in line and handed over twelve coupons, wagering the novelty of a cotton candy drink would erase the failure to procure cotton candy in a bag. I won.
On the drink. Not the seat choice.
Those bleacher seats with back support and good view happened to be right in front of a cranked up sound speaker. The high energy stunt-show emcee nearly knocked us off our bench as her voice shattered through the air to tell us the show would be starting soon. With the more excruciatingly painful version of “my-life-is-now-forever-inextricably-ruined” morphing onto my daughters face, we abandoned our prime perch. Joy! The bleachers were packed by this time, and squatting in front of the track fence became our only option. Feeling the hypocrisy, we plopped down on the grass like the morning’s obnoxious tardy pig-race watchers, and we weren’t even late! The stunt dog show turned out to be the best performance of the day, what we saw of it in between rail posts and yawns. The cotton candy drink and occasional Bluey song helped keep my daughter attentive, but only a little.
Planned: 7 | Not planned: 9
If you’re keeping score at home, you might be wondering how I came up with these tallies. I’m wondering the same, parsing my paragraphs to conduct recounts. What the heck’s my point?
As a parent, I constantly weigh the pros and cons of every decision I make. Did I choose correctly? Will this be worth it? Why do we torture ourselves? And for so much money? Will she even remember this decades from now? My answers to any of these questions are at best reasoned guesses, at worst impulsive reactions.
I know what I remember — that aunt and uncle who took a young me to the fair several times, the strategizing to pick the Tilt-a-Whirl car that would spin the fastest (it was severe disappointment to get a “dud”), the mash-up of old and new, of nature and technology. I want to give my daughter all the things I love and none of the things I hated. It feels like my obligation, a privileged one on top of keeping her safe and healthy, to introduce her to the festivals of life.
In the end we were beyond exhausted. And I was disappointed I didn’t get to try The Fruity Pebble Pickle. But I soaked in her enthusiasm, and was in awe of how she calmly worked through what her remaining coupons could buy. My shoulders relaxed with every “OMG that was the best thing ever!”, my heart gushed that the spinny purple cars we road three times, just the two of us, were her favorite.
I guess I did choose correctly. It was expensive and stressful, but worth it.
“Mommy, can we go to Six Flags tomorrow?”
Sigh. “We’ll see, sweet pea. G’nite.”
Note to self:
Tips for fairing better at the fair:
If you’re going to a fair you’re not familiar with, do a first visit without heat, crowds, or children. Get your lay of the land. Know where shit is. Update your cheat-sheet.
If you can only go once, go with experienced fair-goers who can help you short-cut your way around or divide and conquer.
If you can go multiple times, devote one outing to rides and kid-stuffs. Devote another outing to food and drink. There’s a lot to experience and naively-orchestrated rookies won’t get it all done in a day.
As my father would say, watch it on T.V..
Comments
Have you been to a fair or carnival near you? What’s your fondest (or least-fondest) memory?
If you have never been, are you interested in going? What has kept you from attending?
Have you been impacted by gun violence, directly or indirectly? How have you processed that experience?
I appreciate you, endlessly.
Thanks for the description, Wendy! I’m glad you went and glad it was before this last weekend. I did not plan on going, for the exact reason that I am always hesitant about attending any event with large groups of people and somewhat lax security.
This morning they had the security guy on the news and he said their scanner is designed to find large metal objects and that it should definitely have detected the weapon, implying that the guy got it in some other way.