The smell of popcorn mingling with the acrid scent of electrical burning. The pretty girl from school who seems to be permanently on the ride ahead of you, a chasm more unnavigable than the Mariana Trench. You board the Ferris Wheel. Don’t look down, don’t look down repeating in your head, and then you do. Only to see the next bucket disgorge your intended prey. Or in your wildest dreams, should that just be, “your intended”. Round and round, and up and down you go, never quite close enough to speak the words you have rehearsed a thousand times in your head. Life, it seems, is one big Roller Coaster. A little like the American presidential election campaign. The dizzying ecstatic heights induced by the candidates’ rhetoric and the gut wrenching plunge into despair when the facts fail to support the assertions of your favourites.
Then there’s the Dodgems, possibly the most inappropriately named ride of all time. Especially when your sole objective is to find out if your friend’s neck really will make the sound of a whip, when you slam your car into his unsuspecting back bumper.
“You’re supposed to DODGE ‘EM, that’s why it’s called DODGEMS,” hollers the cocky attendant leaping from one bumper to the next with consummate ease. All the while impressing every female within 200 yards. Including the girl of your dreams.
Another smell invades your consciousness, you follow the sound of meat sizzling on a hot metal griddle. You haven’t been on half the rides yet and the sight of a cheeseburger executing a passable back stroke across the grill should be warning enough, but the heady aroma of fried onions wafting through the air is the signal to send caution scurrying for cover. If you had only cast your gaze in the direction of the Waltzer, you may have taken notice of the recent riders regurgitating their hot dogs and ice creams. The thumping pop music seems to mockingly taunt them by taking a popular tune of the day and regurgitating it, until they never want to hear it again. In much the same way they never want to see another Waltzer.
Of course, you could have gone for the pink cloud on a stick that is candy floss. The effortless, intangible, melting in the mouth, as light as air, sweetness. As if it was never there. Only the stickiness of your lips… …your nose, your chin and your hair give evidence that it ever existed. That and the wooden stick itself, as you try vainly to imagine what alternative use it could be put to. Too flimsy to make a good drumstick, too short for a sword, plus you lack the raw materials or the knowledge to turn it into a sky rocket.
You are surrounded by the cacophony of whirling machinery and pulsating music. The garishly painted rides with a million flashing lights, like little suns cycling through their lifespan from creation to supernova, again and again in a matter of seconds.
At 10:30 it all comes crashing to a close as the whirling slows, the music fades to nothing and the universe explodes one last time.
Now is the time to make your way to the bus stop. Counting your remaining change under a street light in a futile effort to avoid the long, lonely walk home. Clutching your only companion, a stuffed toy you won on the Rifle Range for your little sister.
All the fun of the fair.
A Life On The Shelf 