The State Fair



E-Squared and the Mississippi Crew

 Every year we pilgrimage as a family to visit The Husband's People in Mississippi. They live in the Pearl, MS area, so we load up the Shorties and drive four hours for a visit over our fall break. The State Fair is up and running the week of our fall break, so it's double the fun. We arrive at the fair at around noon and stay until they throw us out. It's exhausting and expensive and silly--perfectly Johnson.

Several meaningless observations about the state fair:


As though the corn dog alone wasn't offensive enough...

One, the only real reason to go to the fair is the food. And you better save up all of your points for that one day, because just walking around breathing in the fumes is fattening. Rib eye steak sandwich, chicken on a stick, cinnamon rolls the size of your head, cotton candy, candy apples, polish dogs, funnel cake...there is absolutely nothing nutritionally redeeming about fair food. They even cover the apples in caramel just to make sure. Of course the first thing that you want to do after ingesting 3,000 calories and 500 grams of fat is ride something that spins rapidly for three minutes.

Two, those rides are intended for people under the age of 20. Seriously. You think to yourself, "Oh, it looks like so much fun," but just like Satan tempting you to do evil, it never, ever works out the way you imagined it. (My neck and vertigo are screaming at me as I type this.) They even name the rides to give you one last chance to come to your senses: the Scrambler, the Ring of Fire, the Maniac, the Freak Out. How smart are you that you purchase a ticket to get on something called the Scrambler? If you are over the age of 30 and get on those rides, you should have to carry a sign that says, "Warning, my gene pool is questionable."

Three, fair people are an entirely different group of mammals. Like they should have their own classification system. First, everyone puts on the strangest things to go to the fair. Hoochie Mama is suddenly a viable fashion statement. And even the hideously fat, ugly women have gotten confused into thinking that showing more of their bodies is somehow making them more attractive. Um, not the case.

Our cousin (on The Husband's side of the aisle, ahem) wore a thing called a Morph Suit. Out in public. To the fair.

Now, in his defense he's sixteen, that alone redeems anything stupid that he chooses to do, but this thing is a whole new level of weird. He and his buddies met up wearing different colored morph suits. They ended up being interviewed by a reporter passing through town who is writing a book about what makes America America. (Interesting that he interviewed the three sixteen-year-olds dressed in body condoms, but that's another blog.)


I stood on the main crossroads and looked around the fair just as the sun was setting and the lights were starting to come on. Bright colors, lights swirling, screaming girls, smelling fried food on the cool, autumn breeze, and I turned to The Husband and whispered, "This is why the world hates us so--we are a land of excess. What are we riding next?"