The Red Tent (and Other State Fair Spectacles)

Yesterday, in Minnesota, I popped my state fair cherry.

Mark was astounded to learn I’d never attended such an event. But I grew up in Rhode Island. There’s just not enough room there to have a state fair. And if we ever did have one, I never knew. It must’ve been on a day when I was sitting in the backyard pulling dandelions and complaining to my mom that I had nothing to do.

So yesterday, I didn’t know what to expect. But before we even left the car, as we were slogging through a slow line of traffic, we passed a woman standing roadside on a small patch of grass. She held up a big sign that said something ranty about something or other. But what caught my eye was the huge cardboard displayed at her feet that said: “STOP BUSH! Tax cuts now!”

I didn’t have the heart to call out to her that Bush was in a hammock in Texas right now, sleeping off a hangover. Doing what he used to do as President no doubt, but far removed from having any impact on our taxes. Or, blessedly, anything else for that matter.

Alas, I held my tongue. I mean, live a half-mile from Berkeley. I know better than to come between a gal and her political causes.

At any rate, that woman’s presence on the outskirts of the fair teed up my expectations for the day.

Nearly instantly upon entering the gates, we zeroed in on the Miracle of Birth building. This House of Blood and Afterbirth Horrors had been described to me by our friends the night before. And I couldn’t imagine anywhere to bring the kids that had better potential for being both fascinating and deeply traumatic.

You could, our friends claimed, witness a calf being born, right there stall-side. They had viewing bleachers even! It was like you and hundreds of other sugar-smeared hordes were the personal birth coaches to dear Bessie the heifer. So intimate.

Sadly, we toured the entire barn, stroked the fur of baby pigs, admired cages packed with chicks, and listening to the bleating of wee lambies—without a single Mama cow performing her Miracle of Birth act. There were, at least, large screens hanging from the ceiling projecting miracles that’d taken place earlier at the fair. Well-timed births for some other lucky fair-goers.

And just like our friends said, the video showed that what comes out first are the calf’s front hooves. Oof! Sends a shiver through my privates just thinking about it. But then, to up the drama and fanfare, the cow’s human birthing assistant grabs a CHAIN. Not even a nice soft-feelin’ rope. A CHAIN. And plunges their arms deep into the—well, you know—to wrap the thing around the formerly content calf, and yank the poor thing right on out, onto a pile of hay. [Cuing, I’d guess, delighted applause from the masses of miracle watchers.]

Gazing at the video, I couldn’t help but reflect on my own first experience giving birth. After some FOUR HOURS of pushing— Did you get that? Four hours. After that, my midwife and an OB used suction cups, bungee cords, and I believe promises of a lifetime of high-sugar cereals to coax Kate from my womb.

With no luck. Tenacious little thing refused to budge, sending out a note to the medical team that I believe said, “I ain’t movin’ unless you cut me out of here.”

Which they did.

And now, only 20 minutes into my maiden state fair experience, I made a note to contact my midwife. Why, I planned to ask her, had they not considered the use of a chain?

My reverie was interrupted by my cell phone alarm going off. It’s set to the “DING dong DING dong” doorbell chime ring. I fumbled in my purse. Time to take my birth control pill.

What timing. It was as if, by virtue of my hormonally-charged surroundings, my iPhone sensed a need to protect me from some spontaneously-wrought pregnancy.

And my luck, as we rounded the kids up, having maxed out our entertainment value on the birthin’ building, with 98.3% of the fair left for us to explore, an announcer on the PA system says something about a cow going into labor. Causing the sea of people—myself enthusiastically included—to push towards the back of the barn in one sweeping wave. I’m frantically looking for a break in the crowd to view some live miracle action (utterly unaware of the rest of my group’s location), when the man playing God on the PA lets out a little chuckle.

“Now let’s not push folks!” he says, bemused. “This’ll take a while! There’s plenty of time to come ‘round and have a look.”

Too much time, it turned out, for us to wait with four sweaty already-seen-these-animals kids. By the time we pushed on, the only thing we saw coming out of that cow was a limp puddle of what looked like Super Elastic Bubble Plastic.

The remainder of the fair can be described as hot, bacon on a stick, crowded, corn dog on a stick, hot, deep-fried Snickers on a stick, waves of exhaustion and self-loathing, pizza on a stick, dessert pizza on a stick, giant slide, mini-donuts on a stick, tantrums, sausage on a stick, vows to never return, and fritters on a stick, foot-long dogs on a stick, caramel apples on a stick, ice cream on a stick, and something called “banquet” on a stick.

Not that we sampled it all, but really, we might as well have. It sort of all flows through you. By virtue of just being there, you become one with it.

The best nutritious deal of the day goes to the one-buck bottomless cup of milk. What mother whose been stuffing her kids silly with greasy stick foods won’t buy THAT to allay her guilt?

At lunchtime (because, clearly, we’d been starving ourselves) an Andean band played nearby. One of the ones where a few dudes are on guitars, and a couple others are playing those super-long bamboo flutes that are all attached to each other. The songs are all frantically, relentlessly upbeat. So as we awaited the arrival of our on-a-stick lunches, I danced the kids over to the stage.

Now, in California, you mix lively music and a family-type event and you’ve got every kid who can barely stand out there shakin’ a soggy diaper. And alongside them are hordes of twirling, singing, smiling, and clapping Mom-Dad-and-toddler factions.

In Minnesota? Uh, not so much.

The most unleashed dude I saw had a huge smile on his face and was doing some aggressive toe tapping. I wanted to pack the poor guy in my suitcase so I could set him free later at our folksy farmers market’s mosh pit.

Alas, our epic trudge to the car—overly hot, overly sugar-fed, and just plain over the fair—was interrupted by a sort of spontaneous spot mob parade. We were suddenly hustled to the curbside, and marching bands, art cars, senior citizen orchestras, and folks in large blue cockroach costumes all came charging through.

Which would’ve be wonderful (I, as you may know, love a parade) if it weren’t for how damn deep-fried we all were, how hard-core the cops were about not letting us pass, and how utterly terrified and hysterical Kate became by every parade participant.

Finally, limping towards the car after my first state fair, I marveled at the rag-tag state of our crew—chicken-fried in grease, tears, sweat, and dust. It’s then that I stumbled upon an idea that was pure entrepreneurial gold.

“Next year,” I announced to Mark and Becca, “We’re setting up shop right here by the parking lot. Get this: BATHS FOR KIDS. We’ll have one area where we hose them off.”

“And a spot where they soap themselves down!” Mark adds.

“They can stick their dirty clothes in a plastic bag.” I say.

“And at the end,” Becca muses, “We…. sell them a State Fair t-shirt! For, like, thirty bucks!”

It’s brilliant. We are so close to be crazy stinking rich, I can just feel it.

Well then Minnesota State Fair, we shall see you again next year. And by then, God willing, that dear cow will be ready to birth that baby.

Johnny Can’t Read Music

The girls and I got to spend an afternoon with my sister Judy and her adoptive Indian parents this week. And by the end of our visit I was convinced that everyone who doesn’t already have a set of these—Indian parents, that is—should get one. Judy’s no fool.

We ate an incredibly delicious home-made Indian lunch, and, not unlike our Italian kinfolk, the more we ate had a direct correlation to how delighted our hosts were. There was a lot of fretting over and playing with the children, and we capped off the afternoon with a cup of chai tea that was so warm and mellow and sweet it nearly caused me to curl up in Amma’s lap like a drunk cat sleeping in the sun. Finally we took a tour of the fabulous Eichler house’s equally fabulous yard, snapped a few photos of everyone with the girls on their laps, and called it a day.

What I was taken by in meeting these lovely folks was their warmth and welcome, and seeing how much a daughter my sister had become to them. But later on the phone, Judy also told me about Appa’s impressive background in academia, and Amma’s—and her parents’—staggering brilliance as musicians. Something for which her family is renowned in India.

Presenting, of course, the perfect opportunity for me to remark to my sister with my highest quality sarcasm, “Oh I get it! That’s why you two are so tight! It’s the whole music thing.”

One of my family’s favorite pastimes, aside from rhythmic throat clearing, unsnarling our hair in the morning, and doing laundry, is making fun of our profound musical ineptitude. No doubt I’ve mentioned that somewhere in this here blog before.

If we are not in fact all tone deaf, we’ve spent the better part of our lives believing ourselves to be. Oddly, from as far back as I can remember, my father has boasted about this as if he’s reporting my oldest sister was elected to the Senate. At any rate, it seems to have become a self-fulfilling familial prophesy.

Which, as you might imagine, has impacted our singing. And our staggering un-Von Trapp-ness can’t help but make me think of a meeting the four of us had with a priest the day after our mother died. We were planning the funeral program. And the priest, Father McSweeney (God bless him), a delightful world class Irish nut job, was enthusiastically, gleefully, talking us through some options of song choices.

He was waddling about the room at a frenetic pace, flipping through song books and clucking in his thick brogue, “Oooh, that’s a good one! A good one, indeed!” Despite our heavy sadness—or maybe because of it—he was determined (I resisted the urge to say “hell-bent”) to whip us into a little sing-along. So he suggested some old standard hymn that was beaten into our childhood brains and started in, beckoning to us vigorously with his arms to join in. We got through just a few verses before our collectively cracking voices had us cracking up laughing, and had old McSweeney bellowing cheerfully ceilingward, “He loves us all, no matter! He loves all our different sounds of praise.”

I guess it’s the closest you can get to having a priest tell you your singing sucks.

In my father’s stint years ago as president of his local Rotary Club, he was required at the start of each meeting to lead the group in singing “On the Road to Mandalay,” a tradition I find both charming and absurd. Anyway, Dad’s voice is so bad—and actually quite booming—that he decided quite early on that he’d lip sync the words for the sake of the group. Something that must’ve been obvious, but that no one called him on. (One of the rare times I can imagine my father determining that not talking was the best course of action. Yes, I’m my father’s daughter.)

In terms of actual instrumental training, as kids my sisters had a limited stint of uninspired piano-lesson taking. But by the time I arrived ten years later, my parents couldn’t summon the energy for me to go through those likely fruitless motions.

I’ve joked to Mark that my instrumental prowess is limited to playing the three-note “Hot Cross Buns” on the recorder. But truth be told, I’ve forgotten how to play even that.

It’s all my very long way of saying that I know I don’t get the music thing. And frankly, along with the other socially-alienating fact that I’ve never seen Star Wars, I’m pretty comfortable with it.

But then a couple weeks ago I bought a toy for the girls when I was at Target. The sad fact is, I rarely seem to think to but them toys. So I was pleased to have remembered that I have kids and kids like to play. And in that happy frame of mind I removed a little red plastic xylophone—you know the typical kiddie style-one with the different colored keys—from the box. It’s got the drumstick thingy attached to it by a string, I guess so you don’t lose it, or so your kid doesn’t swallow it and disembowel themselves from the inside.

And as I’m admiring this new plaything, which was certain to bring them hours of creative fun, this white paper fell out of the box.

I was dismayed. Yet a second look at the packaging confirmed that the toy is for children ages 18 months and up.

Now, is it just me, or am I not correct in assuming that in a little more than three months time, it’s unlikely that Paige will be able to utilize this music sheet? I mean, aside from the fact that she’s got the Bad Music Bruno Gene Mutation (albeit tempered by Mark’s musical skillz). Still!

Now, I’m no expert, but I couldn’t help but wonder if some kinda color-coded sheet music, or even one that identifies the letter notes that’re printed on the keys, might be more, uh, user-friendly?

Who knows. Maybe I’m totally wrong here, and come this summer, I’ll be walking past Paige’s room and will hear her pounding out a mean “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” on the xylophone. I’ll peer in to see her crouched down to follow along on the paper, perhaps tapping her foot to keep time.

I can only hope for as much.

Songs of Torture

My sophomore year of college I lived in a dorm near the DKE fraternity. And although much of what took place in their hazing process was, intentionally and gratefully, not common knowledge around campus, there was one component that year that the whole school was, uh, privy to.

Which was that they blasted the same bloody song OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND OVER AGAIN throughout the famously haunted (but that’s beside the point) Old Kenyon building where they lived, and blaring out onto the quad. To really fuck with the pledges, and anyone else who wasn’t hearing impaired in Knox County, sometimes they’d stop the song for a small stretch. Just long enough to get you really fired up that–sweet relief!–they were moving away from that particular form of aural abuse, and leading some goats into the building or something.

But then, they’d ruthelssly turn it back on. Whaling it extra special loud. And the entire campus would collectively seize up. Scraping at the sides of our faces wondering derangedly if they would ever show mercy on us, and hoping at the very least that whatever intangible social stature those pledges would gain as a result of it all, that it was really fucking worth it.

For years after when I’d hear the song I think I still twitched and gnawed on my lips a bit. I feared I might never shake the trauma.

But here I am, just weeks away from my can-ya-believe twentieth college reunion, and I’m thrilled to report that, as you might have noticed due to its omission–at this point I can’t even remember what that damn song even was.

Which thus far is the best mental yardstick to indicate just how freakin’ long it’s been since my college prime. Well, that or that the experimental mind-erasing procedure I had performed in Boston in ‘97 really did the trick.

Heh.

At any rate, in his years as a Sports Illustrated reporter, Mark got to cover the ‘96 Olympics in Atlanta. (And if you’d like a few commemorative duffel bags, t-shirts, or even a 100% rayon necktie from that event, I can happily hook you up.) Anyway, the bombing that year made the already overworked and sleep-deprived journalists there exponentially more overworked and sleep-deprived.

But outside the hotel where most of them were staying–where they’d retreat for the measly hours of sleep they’d get to have a night–there was a street vendor selling sodas, sounvenirs, and the retarded Izzy the mascot crap. The dude worked nearly round the clock and blasted that hateful hot hit which you’ve probably blacked out of your brain by now, “The Macarena.” He played it in an evil, heartless, endless loop.

And really just one hearing of that song when I’m not even mad for sleep makes me want to take a chop stick to my eardrums.

In the past couple weeks I’ve had occasion to think of these episodes. Unfortunately. All because of one greeting card. One of those open-it-and-it-plays-a-song cards, sent to Kate for Easter from her grandparents. (I won’t tell you from whose side of the family.)

Okay, OKAY! So it was from MY side of the family.

This card plays a very tinny version of a song whose nonsensical verses are, “Yummy yummy yummy, I’ve got love in my tummy, and I feel like I’m loving you.” Verses that at times seem sexually perverse to me, and at other times just an odd choice for how vaguely associated with Easter—candy eatin’, I guess—they are. I’ve had plenty of opportunities to ponder this.

Anyway, don’t get me wrong. This card is adored and beloved by Kate. It was incredibly sweet and thoughtful to have sent it to her. Every time she opens and closes and reopens that card—while eating breakfast, peeing, riding her bike, or leering up close to Paigey’s face—every single time, morning, noon, or night, it’s as though the fact that music emanates from it is a freshly exciting revelation. Something she isn’t certain will necessarily happen if she opens it again. So she needs to check.

That gal’s tenacious.

And even though I’ve had on the order of seven breakdowns where I’ve pleaded with her to take mercy on us and it’s only 6:47AM and Daddy is still trying to sleep and don’t you think that’s a little close to Paige’s face and maybe if we just sit down and eat a big pile of candy for a while that would be a fun way to take a little break from the card hmmm? Even with all that, when I cleaned up all our Easter crap a couple days ago, throwing away the already broken or rotten stuff and shoving the rest of it ceremoniously in a garbage bag for basement storage, I still left that card out for her.

Why? Because in a weirdly genuine I’m-happy-that-she’s-happy-even-if-it-makes-me-unhappy maternal way, I feel like with some intermittent intervention I can stick it out until she eventually hopefully tires of the damn card. Or, if there’s a God, it breaks.

Not that I’m setting my sights on it or anything, but if she ever wants to, that girl could DOMINATE a sorority some day.