Simple Sweet Pleasures

This Sunday was the annual fair at my daughter’s elementary school. Usually it is a huge event with ferris wheels and roller coaster rides, but this year it was different. The school is in the middle of a construction project which made all those big rides impossible to bring on campus. So instead we had relay races, go-fish games, and other whack-a-mole-like games to play. There was a little grumbling from the kids when they realized all those big crazy rides wouldn’t be back this year, but decided to give it a shot and check it out anyway.

Every year the parents are required to volunteer time for more than a few hours. For the last 5 years I have volunteered for the same job…selling tickets. There are 2 reasons I love this particular job. One is my kids always know where I am. Life in Los Angeles isn’t exactly the kind of place you just let your kids run around free of supervision, In fact, it’s downright rare. The school fair provides the perfect place to do just that. I can actually relax and not worry about where they are (okay, I will be honest and admit I am not totally letting go of control…I only give them enough tickets requiring they come back for more ever so often. It’s the perfect mandatory “check-in”). Which leads to the second reason I love this job: I get to check-in with all the friends I haven’t seen all year. Life goes pretty fast and the unintended consequence is loosing touch with friends. I think on this particular day I get more hugs than all the other days of the year combined. I love it.

By the end of the day we all pretty much hit the wall and simultaneously prayed for the 4 p.m. hour to come to pass (it’s closing time for the fair). With a chair strategically placed under my tush and staring off into space, I had serious doubts about how I would muster the energy to make my way back home again.

Doing a head count of my girls I saw a familiar glazed-over look in their eyes. I did a mental inventory of sugar items that passed through the booth that day…there were the pixie sticks, then the hot dogs, then the cotton candy, then the dip-n-dots, then the ring pops, and let’s not forget the basketball size lolly-pop Allie won. I really dropped the ball on this one and can’t imagine what all that sugar in their stomach must have felt like. To say I’m feeling guilty is an understatement. I’m trying to think of something, anything, that didn’t qualify as junk. But nothing, not even a carrot comes to mind.

I got lucky this year and my daughter Brooke helped me sell tickets. Turns out Allie’s favorite game at the fair was “the hammer thingie”. It took me a while to figure out exactly what the “hammer thingie” was, especially since using my brain at this point of the day was decidedly painful. I used to love that game too. You know, the one that you hit the target as hard as you can with a hammer, sending the ball up in the air hopefully hitting the bell at the top? I remember how satisfying it was when the bell actually rang. It always took more than a few turns to make that happen, but with each try I would become more determined, thankfully translating into a satisfying “Ding!” at the end.

The next “Ding!” we heard was at 6:30 a.m. the next morning. Our wake-up alarm was a little more painful than usual since we all had a sugar hangover. Allie complained about her legs hurting on the way to school convinced it was because of the “hammer thingie”. I’m thinking it’s from something else, like the result of actually stretching her legs out to run free all day at the fair. In my opinion that qualifies as a good kind of pain. In fact, we need more of that particular pain.