Fair Play

Today Brynn and I ventured to the North Florida Fair for fried dough, freak shows, and all you can ride collapsible whirling machines. The fair did not disappoint.

For $.50 a piece Brynn checked out "The World's Smallest Woman" and "The World's Smallest Horse." She pleaded for more change to take a gander at "The World's Largest Rat" and "Spider Woman with Eight Legs--Answers Your Questions!" but there are only so many quarters I'm willing to dole out for that sort of thing.

Before setting foot on any of the "unlimited" rides I'd paid $20 for Brynn to have access to, she asked for a $5 camel ride, a $5 surfing simulator attempt, a $5 giant hamster ball on water ride, and a $5 trampoline experience. Once I told her she could choose between any of the $5 diversions or her fried dough later, she promptly re-directed and found the regular fair rides.

Flight of the Fifth Graders

After a long day of riding everything from bumper cars to fun houses, it was finally time for fried dough. You can't eat too many fried foods too early in the day or else unlimited spinning rides turn into a really bad idea.

Going...

Elephant ears are our favorite fair-fried dough. You can't always find them, but they're infinitely better than funnel cake as far as we're concerned. Brynn went with powdered sugar AND cinnamon sugar (what could I say, it's only once [or twice] a year).

Going...

The timing was perfect. The night was beginning to cool down and our hands were a bit chilled. Giant, fresh, warm elephant ears warmed our hands and our insides.

Gone.

Brynn ended up covered in powdered sugar. I ended up feeling like maybe I should have worked up slowly to so much fried food (I also had a corn dog for dinner). Overall though, as long as fair food only works its way into my diet once (or twice) a year, I think it's an essential ingredient in personal happiness.

Many of you know how much I love fairs, my home town county fair especially, but all fairs everywhere as well. There's something magical about how time, responsibility, and calorie counting can be suspended for a few hours. I wasn't nestled at my computer working on a paper. She wasn't running around the house doing chores. Neither of us was eating a single tuft of broccoli. We could run, ride, play, and munch to our heart's content (or at least until we got a belly ache). And in the midst of so many people, all having a good time, we could walk around together and just enjoy each other's company. Sharing all those things, and just a general love for fairs, with Brynn is so special to me. Every year in my fair photos she looks exponentially more grown up than she did just one elephant ear ago. But at least I know that some part of both of us will always be a kid at heart.