A fair place to part with your money

February means the fair has come to Highlands County once again. We missed it last year and the children have given us no end of bellyaching since this horrible injustice was committed. This is the reason we absolutely had to go this year.

It is probably a good idea to space out the number of times a person is willing to risk their lives on carnival rides over the course of a year. My husband, daughter, and son went on a rickety contraption I will always think of as the “Gravitron,” but its current name is something that actually sounds a little outdated, “Starship 2000.” This is a ride that utilizes sliding angled panels and centrifugal force to plaster your brains to the top of your skull.

After having children, my body’s constitution was forever altered resulting in the facts that I can no longer watch scary movies or partake in certain thrill rides which is why I chose to stand by the exit railing counting the number of missing or broken lights around the rim of “Starship 2000” rather than board the mother ship. I think I reached 25, but it was hard to tell because I kept losing track of where I started.

The ride came to a stop a little early and my husband and daughter walked out alone. Apparently, she had become distraught after her shoe fell off and would only answer Daddy’s concerned question “ARE YOU OKAY?” with “MY SHOE!” Centrifugal force negatively influences effective communication skills.

“Fireball” used to be called “Ring of Fire” when I was a teenager. I’ve often wondered if Johnny Cash and a team of lawyers had anything to do with that name change. My son went on this one alone after we passed it several times thinking it was closed because no one seemed to be running it. As it turns out, the operator was just hiding around the corner, but he started the machine unwillingly enough upon request.

My son isn’t seasoned enough to recognize a shady game or outright scam when he sees one and we had a difficult time steering him and his money away from the heckling calls of the midway carnies. He finally had to fork over three bucks to shoot a few holes through a star, but we did manage to talk him out of the basketball game by pointing out the side view of the hoops which revealed an obvious squished oval-shape instead of the preferred round holes usually reserved for actual spherical objects.

Along with death-defying 120 second thrill rides and throwing money into hypothetical garbage cans, the fair is also a good place to increase your blood glucose levels. We chose to accomplish this with three different items. The first was a funnel cake that was almost completely cooked. I thought the raw batter in the middle may end up being too salmonella-ish for my taste so we ate around the edges just to be safe.

Next, nothing says “I’ve taken something perfectly healthy and ruined it” like a caramel apple. I prefer mine with peanuts because they help to keep the sticky sauce off the tip of my nose. My son ate his with chocolate sprinkles which I think is a bit much because I’m judgmental about these things. Finally, you can’t leave the fair without a huge bag of spun rainbow-colored sugar: cotton candy.

We all had a great time, even if it was 44 degrees. The best part is, the only bellyaching we’ll hear this year will be about the food we ate.