Tuesday, August 08, 2006

update!

The middle child, we have learned, also won first place for his sculptured fish!

*yay*

Again, I didn't bring my camera tonight. Somehow it gets eclipsed in the flurry of getting everyone out the door.

We had a leisurely evening at the county Fair tonight. After eating dinner on the Fairgrounds from one of the fine vendors serving food from a camper (you haven't lived till you've sampled a chocolate-covered banana), the teenager and I sat down at the Bingo stand and played a round or two, because it's never too soon to learn what old people look like when they swear. Very important life lesson this.

I also played Skee Ball for the first time in my life. I got a score of 140, which isn't bad, considering. I have decided, now that pinball seems passe, that Skee Ball could be my new enthusiasm. It's so much fun. Though I did get carried away once (er...yes, only once.) and pitched too hard and made the wooden ball ricochet back off the metal grate into the crowd. No injuries were reported.

The Skee Ball attendant was a nineteen-year-old girl who kept making out with her Slavic boyfriend while I played the game. She'd come up for air long enough to give me another token, and then they'd resume the clinch. I had so much total concentration into beating my top score of 140 that I really didn't care. The wistful enchantment of their first love was totally lost on me. They could have gone ahead and conceived their first child on one of the vacant Skee Ball alleys and I wouldn't even have looked over. Just as long as they left me enough tokens to keep playing.

If not, I would have had to interrupt them rudely and demand they take it elsewhere. Because, you know, first things first.

I bet I could go back tomorrow and get 170. I was so close. I really, really was.

It's great about my middle kid, though, isn't it? And he was the one who was resolute that he'd never win anything, that he has no more to offer, that the art world is thriving well without him and he could pull up stakes and go home; nary a critic would blink.

So melodramatic. I have no idea where he gets that from.