Aug. 13, 2009

On Thursday we went to the fair. Twice.
After last year’s circus act (seven kids and two adults) my sister and I decided we’d be smart this year and break our children into two groups: the “We Want Fair Food” group, and the “We Don’t Know Any Better So Just Give Us Crackers” group.
The big problem with the two-group routine is that by the time you take the first group home and pass them off to the babysitter, you kind of need a 12-hour nap. And we started with the easy group, the 4-and-unders.
Please, do not be deceived. Older children at the fair are way more work than a couple of toddlers. We wheeled the little ones through the barns and past the ponies without a single problem. They rode their small handful of toddler rides and didn’t ask for food. Perfect.
But those older hoodlums? They don’t know how to walk, anywhere. They run. Keeping up with their high-on-fair-food energy level required roller-blades and a Diet Coke.
We spent hours pacing around the carnival section, ferrying them from one ride to the next and waiting to make sure no carnies stole them during the interim.
I did have one moment that will go down in parental panic-hood history. I put Harrison, 6, and his 5-year-old cousin on the barrel ride. This is the greatest ride any county fair has ever offered. It’s a barrel train pulled by a tractor, and it’s free. F-R-E-E.
The ride is first-come, first-serve, and is, literally, a barrel of fun. (But watch out, because if you don’t dive into a barrel when the train stops, you’re not getting on. There is no barrel line supervision committee, and some of those Harbor kids are tough.) 
The other great thing is that the barrel ride takes 15 minutes. Parents get a 15-minute reprieve from the never-ending record called, “I want that!”
So I stand around for 15 minutes, visiting with some friends, when the tractor finally pulls up. I glance over at the train and my eyes stop on Barrel No. 3. That’s the green barrel. The barrel my son picked. The empty barrel.
Wait, what? Why is that barrel empty? The panic hits me like a big wave of shaved ice. I’m suddenly screaming at the top of my lungs, “Where’s my kid?! Where’s my kid!? WHERE’S MY KID???!!!”
He’d been gone for 15 minutes. The train goes all over the fairgrounds. Someone plucked him out of the barrel, stuck him in a van and drove away.
Unfortunately, my own personal gunslinger is out of reach in Wyoming, and without Mr. Bond around, who’s going to save the bad guy when I catch him and break his knee caps?
And that’s when the tractor supervisor informs me that my son is hiding in the nose of the barrel.
By the time I was through alternating between kissing him and screaming at him, the poor kid probably wished someone had stolen him. I bought him a shaved ice anyway.

Annie Valentine is a 1997 graduate of Elma High School, a former Miss Grays Harbor and now lives with her family in Utah. She can be reached at regardingannie@gmail.com

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