The
early 90s saw my sister transition from hair metal fan to grunge
girl. She was into Pearl Jam, Alice in Chains and Stone Temple
Pilots. Eddie Vedder replaced Bret Michaels on her bedroom wall. I
remember in Junior High borrowing her Pearl Jam shirt over and over
again. It was black with a stick figure dude and it was gnarly. But
then flannel was what it is all about.
The
Fannin County Fair was going on and it was a little chilly. I asked
April to borrow one of her flannel shirts and she said fine. I
grabbed one and put it over one of my t-shirts unbuttoned and was
off. It was dark outside but the fair was only a few blocks away. I
had a few bucks burning a hole in my pocket and played a few games.
Popped some balloons with a dart. Played that rigged basketball
shooting game. And there was the game where you pitch a ball and
guess your speed.
Fair
games suck so I never was that into them. It's just throwing money
away. I grabbed a chili dog and coke from a food truck and pigged out
on that real quick. I ran into a bud from school named Mitch
Millhollen. We hung out. We rode the zipper and the super loop.
Without much money left we decided to take a spin on the
tilt-a-whirl. This was a humiliating mistake.
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| The Tilt-a-whirl is an evil son-of-a-bitch. Daryl Mitchell |
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| The super loop was always my second favorite fair ride. http://www.ride-extravaganza.com/thrill/super-loops/ |
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| The Zipper was my favorite ride of all time. http://thedod3.com/whitetrashcarnierides/zipper/ |
That
night my body decided that I could no longer ride on spinny rides.
You know the feeling you get when you know you are about to hurl?
Like you know you have ten seconds to get to a sink, trash can, or
toilet? That was me. Early on in the ride my face was flushed, my
gut was clenched and my throat enlarged. I was afraid and I tried to
fight it. But to no avail. I tried to aim at the corner toward the
floor of our car but that was futile. I threw up on my pants. I
threw up on Mitch's pants. It was so incredibly embarrassing.
We
got off the ride and I told Mitch I was so sorry. I told him, “I
shouldn't have eaten those three chili dogs!” I only ate one by the
way. He was upset but was actually pretty cool about it. Clearly he
was disgusted, but what was done was done. He didn't make it into a
huge ordeal. In the end he told a few people at school, but it
didn't haunt me in the halls of LH Rather Middle School for years.
After
the incident, I walked home. I audibly chastised myself the entire
way. It was so mortifying. I had made an ignominious spectacle of
myself. I changed my pants and lie awake in bed an hour or so. I
caught the tail end of an episode of Friday the 13th the
Series on my old TV and couldn't focus. That night sucked. I was
going to put on my pajamas. I had a ride ticket or two in the flannel
shirt pocket and pulled it out to put on my dresser for another day.
Only, I didn't pull it out. There was $10 in the pocket. Jackpot! I
decided I'd go back to the fair. I didn't go through enough torture
to be shamed out of attending the amusements.
I
snuck out my bedroom window and walked back out there. I was going
to try out the baseball throwing game. I knew from earlier how fast
I could throw. This would be a breeze. Each throw was a buck. I got
this. I guessed 64 miles per hour. Nope. It was 57 mph. I guessed 57
and threw it again. Nope, it was 60 mph. And so it went over ten
tries. I never guessed it. I was always off by 3 to 7 miles per
hour. Fantastic. I left the fair in disgrace once again. I cursed
myself during my solitary walk of indignity. I was a loser.
I
got home pissed and went to sleep. Saturday morning my sister got her
shirt back. A bit later she asked where her money was. She had $10 in
the pocket. I told her that I had spent it. I thought she gave me
the money. She was pissed but didn't make a huge deal about it. It
was clear she was upset with me. But what's the point? I felt guilty
and apologized. That's something I never really got in the habit of
doing. As Elton John said, “It seems to me that sorry is the
hardest word.”
I
was so bent on being mad at myself for vomiting on Mitch, failing at
the carnival game, at stealing my sister's money. What I did was
understandably distressing. But Mitch and April didn't allow rage to
consume them. Even in the heat of the moment, they understood the
concept of sunk cost. The damage was already done. Let's not dwell
on it. Let's move on. I am my harshest critic. Because I'm at the
center of a calamity things will always seem like a bigger deal. I
must learn to see from others' perspective. I'm just a small part in
a complicated machine. If it's genuinely not a big deal, don't allow
it to devour your existence. It'll be okay.
###
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| My sister (top left) myself and my cousins Jennifer and Christy. 1986. Before Grunge. |
If I had to pick a single song to be the soundtrack to this post it would be...
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