All's fair at the fair

The fall of the year, as my mother used to call it, is upon us, and that brings back memories of the old Griffin-Spalding County Fair. I remember being excited when the multi-colored billboards would start to appear around the county, promising the coming of the fair with its rides and games and incredibly unhealthy but delicious food.

I always loved going to the fair. I loved riding (some of) the rides. I loved eating corn dogs and cotton candy. I even loved going to see the livestock exhibit, which smelled to high heaven, but where else was I going to see goats and pigs and enormous piles of cow droppings?

As I look back on it now, though, the fair could be a pretty dangerous place. My parents, once I got old enough, used to drop me off, then come back and pick me up. We don’t do this anymore with our children, since we’re all over-protective, and we’ve seen episodes of Dateline on NBC.

The most dangerous aspect of the fair was, of course, the people who traveled with the carnival. Do you remember when, just before the invasion of Iraq, Saddam Hussein opened the doors to all of the prisons and insane asylums in Baghdad and let the inhabitants roam the streets? Well, that pretty much describes your average collection of carnival workers.

These dregs of society manned the rides and the carnival games. Here’s a fun guessing game – which does the guy running the game have more of, fingers, teeth or times arrested? Ok, it’s not really a fair game. “Times arrested” always wins.

Then there were the rides, which were rusty and creaky and probably hadn’t been inspected since FDR was president. I can remember excitedly climbing on those rides, paying no heed to the fact that they were being held together by Scotch tape and chewing gum.

There was one particularly insidious ride called the “Skydiver.” On this contraption, you were strapped into a metal cage which was attached to a big wheel, similar to a Ferris wheel. And as you went around in circles, the cage would roll over. You could control how much it rolled, if it all, with a steering wheel inside the cage of death. Why this appealed to anyone, I never knew.

I would never ride it as a kid, always making the excuse “that looks lame” or “it doesn’t go fast enough.” The truth was, the mere sight of it scared me to death. Who were these crazy people climbing on that thing and letting the winner of a Charles Manson look-alike contest pull a lever that controlled their fate?

So one year, when I was a little older and had a fancy job at the Food Giant grocery store and a 1968 Mustang with a white vinyl top and a little spending money in my pockets, I took a young lady to the fair. That’s a romantic scenario you see in a lot of movies, right? Young lovers, strolling down the midway hand in hand, the girl eating some cotton candy while clutching a stuffed unicorn the boy won for her at a carnival game; the boy, strutting on the sawdust, pulling his girl close and hoping to steal a kiss on the merry-go-round.

Well, I take this crazy chick to the fair, and the first thing she does is point to the Skydiver and say, “I want to ride that!” I pretended to not hear her, and instead steered her to the carnival games. “Let me win you a stuffed animal,” I said. She said OK, but I saw her cast one more glance filled with desire at the freaking Skydiver, and I knew I was in trouble.

The first game we went to required me to knock over some bottles with a softball. This, I thought, would be easy. I was a pretty fair country ball player and had a good arm. What I didn’t know was that the parolee running the game had filled the bottles with something like iron or kryptonite, and it would have taken a hydrogen bomb to knock one down.

Then we went to basketball shooting game. I was a good shot back in those days, but all three of my attempts clanked off the rim which, I’m guessing, was actually smaller in circumference than the basketball. I was running out of money and pride, and not impressing my date.

Finally, I found a game where you tossed softballs into a basket. This seemed pretty easy, so I stepped up and did it on the first try, and beamed at my date, and the chain gang escapee handed me, I’m not kidding, a small piece of shag carpet. Wait a minute, I said, pointing to colorful stuff elephants and giraffes, what about those? Oh, to win that you have to throw it in one of those, he said, pointing to a basket about as big around as a doughnut. I knew I had been defeated.

“Come on,” I said to my date, once I found her again, “let me buy you a corn dog or some cotton candy.”

“That stuff is gross,” she said. “Let’s go ride something.”

“OK,” I sighed, and before I could point her toward the Tilt-o-Whirl, she grabbed my hand and began sprinting toward the Skydiver. My fate was sealed. The only possible chance I had at even getting a peck on the cheek was to climb aboard that death machine and test my fate.

We got on the thing, and I tried to lean in close to her, but this maniac was already turning the steering wheel, trying to get us upside down before the ride even started. I took my arm from around and began to fight for control. I saw that I was losing this battle, and I decided right then and there that no kiss was worth this, and I tried to open the door and get out, but Cool Hand Luke hit the start button, and away we went.

Around and around we went, with Sybil beside me trying to make the cage spin, and me holding on for dear life. I may as well have not even been on the ride – she was in love with the thrill, and not me. After about 10 times around, we get to the top of the ride – and it stops. Dead. Apparently, there was a mechanical issue with the ride.

I look down, and the guy’s walking around with a screwdriver, trying to figure out how to get the ride going again. I was thinking of jumping out, but my date keep spinning the cage, and finally I told her, “If you do that one more time, I’m going to throw up on you.” I guess the greenish tint to my face convinced her that I was serious, so she stopped her foolishness, and sulked as I held the steering wheel steady, keeping us upright until the ride got going.

Finally, it started up again, and when I reached solid ground I bolted out of the door and began wobbling back up the midway, ready to go home. My date was walking behind me when she saw a group of her friends, and she said, “If you’re not feeling well, I’ll just hang out with my friends and have one of them take me home and you can leave.”

I nodded my head, mumbled something and left her in the sawdust. I glanced over my shoulder and all I saw was her blonde hair bouncing as she ran back toward the Skydiver, and we didn’t go on any more dates.
Oh, and I kept the piece of shag carpet.

It's in the bag

The other night I heard a cell phone ringing somewhere in the kitchen. I knew it wasn’t mine, because my ringtone is the opening riff from “Whole Lotta Love,” cause I’m just cool like that.

I figured it must be my wife’s, and I could hear that she was upstairs in the shower, so I decided to go get it and, depending on whose number showed up on caller ID, answer it and let whoever it was know that she wasn’t available, or just pretend I didn’t hear it ringing.

I finally traced the signal to somewhere on the kitchen table, then realized it was coming from the bowels of her purse. So I opened the purse, looked in and realized I would not be able to find an atomic device in that mess, let alone a small cell phone.

What is it with women and their purses? I actually dug in there a little bit to try and find the phone, and came up with all sort of stuff – receipts from the 1990s, emery boards, mysterious clumps of keys, makeup, tissue, and about $17 worth of pennies and nickels. It looked like a miniature recycling center in there.

A woman’s purse is a mysterious hinterland best left alone by men. My mother used to call hers a pocketbook, but I don’t hear that term much anymore. I can remember when I was a kid, she could reach in there and produce anything she needed. For example, she always seems to have a wet rag in a plastic bag, which she would use to wipe my face before we went into a store or somebody’s house. And if I needed a Band-aid or an aspirin or a cough drop, she’d reach in there like a magician and, voila, pull it out.

I have seen women around my office carrying purses that are as big as they are. And most of the women I see at work are not just carrying a purse, but also a couple of other bags draped around their body. I feel a little guilty sometimes when I get on the elevator in the morning, not carrying a thing, everything I need stuffed into my pants pockets, when some poor 100-pound woman gets on looking like a roadie for The Who, carrying twice her body weight in assorted purses, bags and satchels.

What is in all of these bags? Are these women carrying out secret company documents? Are they smuggling drugs? I just don’t see the purpose.

They like to change their purses a lot, too. I’ll carry a wallet around until it’s held together by duct tape, but they change purses like they change their underwear. My wife will say, “I need a new purse,” and I’ll say, “But you just got one,” and she just says “It’s a woman thing. You don’t understand” And since I’ve admitted that I don’t understand women, I’ve painted myself into a corner and I don’t have a defense.

I could deal with it until one day, she took me into a Coach purse store. Apparently, Coach is a brand of purse that’s not available at, say, Walgreens. I mean, I should have known what I was in for when a brand of purses has its own store.

Anyway, I got bored, as a straight man is bound to do in a store pull of women’s purses, and I decided to just look at a couple of the price tags, to see what this was going to set me back. Holy Moly! “Are we buying a purse or a Toyota?” I asked my wife. I mean, when you have to finance something that you just use to carry stuff around, you’re paying too much for it.

Maybe I exaggerate, but I don’t think anyone will think any less of my wife, or any women, if they carry the same purse around for more than two weeks at a time. Just get a shovel and clean it out once in a while, and it will last you a good long time.

Rock and roll!

I dropped my daughter off at the University of Georgia Wednesday, as we moved her into her dorm. I’ll give them credit at UGA – they’ve made the process of doing this so incredibly hot and difficult that you wind up being too tired to break into tears when you say your goodbyes.

Instead of going home and moping, my wife and I went to a concert at Philips Arena that night. Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers were the headliners and, let me tell you, they flat-out rocked the house. You can tell I’m old because I use phrases like “rocked the house.”

I had scored some last minute seats that became available for only $20 apiece. They were on the side of the stage, but very close, so we had a great view and didn’t need a second mortgage to buy the tickets, like the people right in front of the stage had to do.

The opening act was Crosby, Stills and Nash, as part of their “Can you believe we’re still alive?” tour. I’ve always said there were only three things I didn’t like about Crosby, Stills and Nash – Crosby, Stills and Nash. But, I reasoned, how bad can it be? At the worst, they’ll just come out and bore us to death with acoustic guitars.

Man, was I wrong about that one. They came out and bored me to death with electric guitars. At 7:30 sharp, David Crosby’s liver crawled out on stage, and the boys kicked into their version of “Woodstock.” The guy sitting next to me in a Woodstock 1969 t-shirt seemed to enjoy it, but that was probably just the acid flashbacks talking.

The sidestage view allowed me to notice some things I normally wouldn’t have seen. For instance, Stephen Stills has a bald spot the size of a manhole cover. David Crosby at one point turned his back to the audience, walked over near the drummer and very subtly, um, adjusted himself. As for Graham Nash – he was barefoot, and walked around with a glass of wine, and, well, I’m not entirely sure why he was even there.

I also noticed they had a monitor in front of the stage that was scrolling the lyrics to the songs. Really, guys, you don’t know “Teach Your Children” by now? Of course, I guess at their age, they probably can’t even remember if they put their teeth in that morning. I also saw a few young ladies on the front row throwing some fetching glances at CS&N, and dancing a little suggestively, though I’m not sure how you dance to those songs. Now, come on, girls. You’re going to need a case of Viagra and a defibrillator if you plan to hook up with these boys after the show.

All right, all right, I’m just kidding about the age thing. I sort of admire that men of advanced age can still get on stage and perform. It’s just that nobody ever thought rock and roll, and rock and roll musicians, would last this long. I remember seeing an old interview where a very young Paul McCartney said he’d feel silly, standing on stage at 30 years old singing “All My Loving.” He’s about 70 now and still doing it.

However, some of the concert attendees – well, they perhaps should make a concession or two to their age. Some of these women apparently have a magic mirror in their house, so when they look at themselves in their mini-dress and halter-top, they see how they looked in 1985. The rest of us, however, are subjected to how they look NOW, and it’s often not a pretty sight.

I used to think it was pathetic for old (over 30) people to go see old (over 30) rock stars play music, but now, what the heck? I’ll probably keep going even after the bands come onstage with a walker, and I’m hooked up to an oxygen tank. Long live rock and roll.

All grown up

It was the early morning hours of Jan. 2, 1992 in a small rental house in Milledgeville, Ga. I had just crawled into bed after watching the New Year’s Day football games. Miami had defeated Nebraska in the Orange Bowl, and I was tired after a hard day of eating Doritos and manning the remote control from the couch.

Not long after I got under the covers, my wife Susan said, “Mark, I think something is happening.” I muttered something along the lines of “arrgehhhummfff” and went back to sleep.

Then she stood up and she said, “I’m serious. My water just broke.”

“It’s ok,” I mumbled, half-asleep. “I’ll get you another one.”

Then recognition crept in, and I realized what she meant. I jumped out of bed and ran around the house like Ricky Ricardo, getting everything ready to drive 40 miles to a Macon hospital for my wife to give birth to our first child.

We got to the hospital and, a mere 18 hours later, our new baby came into the world, a daughter we named Alice Susan and decided to call Allie. She came in screaming her head off, which was a sign of things to come.

I was accused by other members of the family, specifically my mother-in-law, of monopolizing my little girl in her first few days of life, not letting anybody else hold her. Most photographic evidence from the time supports this, as she seems to be in my arms in every picture. Fine, guilty as charged. My message to the world was clear – she’s mine. You can’t have her.

We brought her home and her first night, a miracle happened, as snow fell softly outside during the night, something that almost never happened in Milledgeville. Little did we know, this would be our last peaceful moment for the next six months.

This child did not like to sleep. Well, not at night, anyway. Being a modern dad, I alternated with my wife getting up with the baby, to feed her or change or just listen to her scream for half an hour. We both began to dread the words, “It’s your turn.”
But we survived, and the beautiful little baby turned into a beautiful little girl, with an angelic face, and a healthy dose of attitude. One of my most vivid memories came when she was not even two years old, and was sitting in the living room watching “Barney”. She was very close to the TV set, so I said “Allie, honey, back up from the TV. You’re too close.” She ignored me, so I said “If you don’t move back, I’m going to turn the TV off.” So she scooted back a little, and I heard her say, under her breath, “Whatever.” I swear I’m not making this up.

Being a parent makes you go a little crazy. It makes you want to walk down the street and slap a 6-year-old girl who made your daughter cry. It makes you want to call for a federal investigation into the basketball coach who didn’t put her on the team. It makes you cry at kindergarten graduations and it makes you tremble in fear every time you hear a siren and your child is not at home.

There’s a line in a John Prine song, “Time don’t fly, it bounds and leaps.” That is so true. Because 18 years have leapt by me, and next week I am going to take my baby up to The University of Georgia – which, just last week, was declared the top “party school” in the United States. Well, that’s just great.

I know a lot of people who have had children go off to college, and when I talk to them about it, they give me this look of pity that says, “You don’t know what you’re in for.” Well, I know it’s not going to be easy. I can imagine that drive back from Athens is going to be a pretty quiet one.

But I also know that, at some point, you have to let them go. You have to let them become adults, even though they give you reasons daily to wonder how they’re going to survive in the world. But she’s a smart girl, and she’ll make her own mistakes, and she’ll figure it out.

I can only hope that all those times I’ve annoyed her by telling her what not to do, and all of those times I’ve treated her “like a baby”, and all of those words of advice that caused her to roll her eyes, are going to actually have a positive effect.

And even though she’s going to be on her own, my message is the same. She’s still mine. You still can’t have her.

Aging ungracefully

I don’t know how much I’m enjoying getting older.

Oh, wait, yes I do – not at all.

I’m sure you’ve heard all that crap about the advantages of getting older – wisdom, experience, maturity. It’s all overrated.

Do I know more things than I used to? Theoretically, yes. But I also forget things much more often. So knowledge may be flowing into my brain, but it’s flowing right back out, sweeping along with it all sorts of important information, like “Where did I park today?” and “Why did I walk into the bathroom?”

I mean, I am forgetting things immediately. This morning I had a headache, and I took down the bottle of pills, and 30 seconds later I looked at the pills and thought, “Wait. Did I just take two of those?” I honestly couldn’t remember. So to be safe, I took two more. The headache is gone, though my liver may now be damaged.

I will frequently go to google.com on my computer, and just sit there and stare at the screen, because I’ve already forgotten what I was searching for. Usually it’s something important, like “How old is Salma Hayek?”

Another not-so-fun part of aging is that I tend to repeat myself. And not only that, but I tend to repeat myself.

Then there are the physical ravages of time. I have a debit card with my photo on it. That photo is about 10 or 11 years old. In my mind’s eyes, that’s still the way I look – dashing, handsome, a little danger lurking behind the eyes. (Keep in the mind that I’m jacked up on headache meds as I type this).

Anyway, a friend sitting next to me saw my card and then looked at the real me and said, “Wow, all of that in only 10 years.” Meaning, Dude, you have gone downhill! Then to soften the blow, she said, “It happens to us all.” That was comforting. That’s like telling somebody, “Hey, you’re not the ugliest person I’ve ever seen.”

And the old body sure ain’t what it used to be. I used to run a lot. Less than two years ago, I did a half-marathon. But circumstances caused me to take a long break from running, and I’ve recently tried to get it going again. I’m not really sure you could what I’m doing “running.” Last time I ran, a turtle passed me. My legs felt like they were encased in cement, my lungs burned, and I was sweating like a Tennessee football player taking a drug test. And this was just walking from the car to the track.

I have hairs growing in new places and hair that’s turning gray. I had an MRI the other day and the doctor called to tell me that I have a fatty liver. So now, I’m on some liver-cleansing diet. It’s as wonderful as it sounds. The good news is, I’m bound to forget that I’m on it soon, and I’ll start eating real food again.

And yes, I know, getting old beats the alternative, and I should be thankful that I’m as healthy as I am, and I agree with all of that, I suppose. Wait, what was I talking about again?

Leaving the nest

As a parent of teenagers, I am starting to face the oncoming empty nest syndrome.

My daughter has a job now, and will soon be heading off to the University of Georgia. My son has a girlfriend, car and drivers’ license, so I see him about as often as Halley’s Comet. Sometimes I walk through a quiet house that once was full of life and I get a little sad, thinking of them being gone for good.

And then other times I think, “Bring it on!”

Sure, I’ll miss them. But there are a lot of things I won’t miss. I won’t miss, for example, having to move three cars every time I need to back out of the driveway. I won’t miss lathering up my face with shaving cream, then opening a drawer to discover my razor has been “borrowed.” And I won’t miss never getting a good night’s sleep.

The other night, my wife and I were lying in bed asleep, since it was after 11 p.m. and we’re old. The bedroom door burst open and in stormed my 18-year-old daughter. She is a very girly, pretty, sweet girl, but at night she walks around the house like a water buffalo. She slams doors and cabinets and makes enough noise to scare away the devil. I should have known something was up when she didn’t sleep through a single night the first six months of her life. It was a bad omen.

On the night in question, she stomped through the room, opened the bathroom door, flipped on a light, grabbed something, and walked back out. “Don’t mind us,” I called out as she slammed the door behind her. “We’re just sleeping.”

The next night, I had hope of actually getting some sleep. My son was off at a church camp about 30 miles away, and my daughter was working late and wouldn’t be home until midnight. I was hoping I could be sound asleep by the time she blew into the house like a hurricane, as is her style.

At about 11:30, the phone rang. Any parent with children of driving age knows the absolute terror that sound can cause. You answer the phone in fear, praying that you won’t be hearing a state trooper on the other end of the line, or that your child is not calling you from a pay phone in the county jail or a wedding chapel in Gatlinburg. My fear quickly subsided, though, when I heard, “Uh, dad, see, what happened was, my car keys jumped out my hand, and got stuck in the ignition, and then I panicked and accidentally hit the lock button and closed the door, and…”

Suddenly, feared turned to anger. At this point I was fully awake and I said, “You locked your keys in your car AGAIN?” Then, to make sure I didn’t say anything that would be used against me later in a child protective services’ hearing, I did the smart thing and handed the phone to his mother. I tried to fall back asleep as they worked out the details of how to get the spare key to him. I knew I was going to wind up getting screwed in this deal, so I figured I’d at least try to get rested before my early morning drive.

Of course, within a few minutes the phone rang again. It was my daughter, thoughtfully letting us know that instead of midnight, she might not get home until 12:15. I know, I know, I should count my lucky stars that she was thoughtful enough to call me. Yep, that’s exactly what I was thinking. I’m a lucky, lucky man.

Speaking of Lucky – I had just laid my head down on my pillow when she decided to add to the fracas with some poorly-timed and very loud barks. I went to the back door and put it to her straight – “Look, I can’t do this with the rest of them, but if you don’t shut up I will duct-tape your mouth closed and put you in the trunk of a car until the morning.” She’s not leaving the nest, so I have to be a little more proactive with her.

Before I know it, I’ll be getting a good night’s sleep, I’ll always know where my razor is, and I won’t have to drive 60 extra miles on the way to work to unlock somebody’s car. And I’ll probably hate it.

Cold hard cash

My daughter got her own debit card the other today. I haven’t read the Book of Revelation lately, but I’m pretty sure that’s one of the signs of the apocalypse.

I think my kids believe that debit cards are magic. They don’t fully comprehend the concept yet that without money in the bank account, the debit card is worthless. It’s like the old joke, I can’t be broke, I still have checks!

I was a full-grown adult by the time debit cards came into existence, and replaced cash in my wallet. You can buy just about anything anywhere with a debit card, but every now and then that dependence jumps up to bite me.

For example: I went to a CD store today to buy tickets to go see one of my favorite bands, Blue Rodeo, at Smith’s Olde Bar. I talked to the aging hippie who runs the store on the phone and, when the pot residue allowed him to make a complete sentence, he told me that if I got to the store by 2, I would be able to get my tickets.

So I drove all the way up Alpharetta, which is about halfway to the Yukon Territory from my house, and I went in the store, where Anglo-Cheech tried to sell me the tickets. After staring at the computer screen for a few minutes like the little girl watching TV in Poltergeist, he said, “Ok, there it is. That’ll be $34, dude.”

I pulled out my debit card, and he said, “Oh, it’s cash only for tickets.” Cash? What the heck is going on? Who outside of drug dealers, strippers and Congressmen demands to be paid only in cash?

As luck would have it, I did have some cash in my wallet, so I started counting out the bills, laid everything I had on the counter, and it came to – wait for it - $33. I looked at the guy pleadingly and I said, “I have $33 right here.” And he just stared back at me. He wasn’t having it.

“Hang on a sec,” I said, and I went out to my car, got on my hands and knees, scrounged between the seats and under the floor mats and I was able to come up with a quarter, six dimes and three nickels. I now had $34 on the button, so I went in the store, reminded the guy who I was and why I was there, then paid him and walked out with my tickets.

I got in the car, started heading back south, and it hit me – I had to go through the toll booth on Georgia 400, and that costs 50 cents, and I didn’t have it, cause mister dazed and confused wouldn’t cut me a break on the tickets! I got off at the next exit, found an ATM, withdrew some money, stopped in a convenience store for some gum so I wouldn’t have to break a $20 bill at the toll booth, and got back on the road.

I had always wondered what would happen to you if you got to the toll booth and you just flat-out did not have the 50 cents required to go through. Would they drag you out of your car and beat you? Would they impound your car and make you walk home? Do they take IOUs?

I was about to find out. I pulled up to the one of the booths with a cashier, since I didn’t have exact change, and noticed the brand-spanking-new sports car in front of me, which probably cost about $50,000, wasn’t moving, because the driver didn’t have 50 cents! He was talking to the toll-booth lady, who got out of the booth, walked behind his car, took a photograph of his license plate, went back into her booth, then handed him a slip of paper and lifted the gate. Ok, so THAT is what happens.

The moral of this story is, always keep a little cash on hand. You never know when you’re going to run into a toll booth or a Congressman.