I have to make an effort to be a better uncle-figure to my nieces, who live here in town and I don't see that often, even though they're the greatest and I'm pretty sure I have some sort of Favorite Uncle status with them. So that means more quality time with them. More hugs, more sit down talks about growing up and things like that.
A few years ago I took them to a carnival/fair thing in the parking lot of a large public high school and this year I thought I'd take one of the girls to it again after her mom asked me to hang out with her this weekend. They had a total blast. The wife and I had a blast watching them. Good times were had. I also didn't pay attention to the carnival workers during that visit, or at least have no recollection of them or their activities.
This year was slightly different, but only in that I WAS AFRAID, not for me, well kind of for me, but for any child who walked into that parking lot hoping to experience joy and not grow up painfully, tragically, and traumatically fast.
I will start with the cigarettes. They were all smoking. No, wait, they weren't: they were all holding once lit, 2/3rds already-smoked cigarettes. Perhaps "they were all smoking" should be rewritten as "ALL OF THEM were, at the same time, holding unlit but mostly finished cigarettes." Every single one of them.
We walked around once and determined that if we needed to identify a carnie, uniforms wouldn't be needed. Instead you'd just look for the person whose souls had left their bodies years ago and these dried up shells of persons were milling about trying to get you to spend $5 to throw darts to win an incredibly terrible and unsafe stuffed animal. AND to do so, you'd look for the person so desperate for a downer that they would resort to saving on to that cigarette they were almost finished with on their break, but it was their last one, and not a single coworker was able to bum a smoke BECAUSE THEY TOO WERE DOWN TO THEIR LAST BLUNT OF AN EMBER OF NICOTINE, and these chars were to last a mere two and a half days EACH CARNIVAL WORKER.
Maybe they had ALL gotten off break? At the same time?
More identifying factors include:
-tattoos. Nothing wrong with that. But most visible arm and leg tattoos were colorless. Just flat linework unfilled other than with empty space to suggest that their inmates didn't have time to finish. Certainly these tattoos were no more pointless than the dumb tattoos stupid sorority girls or trixies get to show off at the bahrs. Celtic symbol, anyone? Yet I imagine most established places of business related to child entertainment might be a little stricter on how employees present themselves, but hey, I wear camouflaged shorts at my comic book store on a frequent basis.
-Concentrated Attention To Detail. Specifically, having to count out change at the games dollar by dollar, and very slowly. I'm not sure if this is because counting is a difficult task for some of these employees, or if it's a sign to OTHER employees that I have change, hence money, and now I've been flagged, and they need to get it.
-Concentrated doses of surliness or even outright rage. I'll get to that in a second.
-Basic refusal to even see the pointlessness of enforcing rules about lines when there's no one in line, which happened to us at the Bumper Cars, yet almost terrifying negligence of safety from every other aspect of their job, such as handing off the darts to a small child while still holding that possibly lit almost-finished cigarette.
Now: Did we get a dose of surliness!
It started at the Bumper Cars. There were two small sets of stairs leading to the entrance. Both handrails were adorned with "Enter" signs. Not with a 'please,' not with an 'oh wait, you know what?' but just a "No! Don't enter THERE. (referring to where we were walking up) You can only enter HERE." Then why not cover up the other "Enter" sign? I understand your need to have order. But we were the ONLY ONES THERE.
We were turned away from the Ferris Wheel not once but twice. First from a surly employee not only present at the Wheel, but also clearly operating some seemingly important function related to its maintenance. "I don't run the Ferris Wheel!" he yelled. There's a lot of yelling going on by the people who run the rides, or don't run the rides, or just plain work there. "I don't know who does! He's not here yet!" Later, we saw a different person sitting behind the controls of the Wheel. When asked if he was the proper person who ran the Ferris Wheel, we were greeted with a shout, "NOT FOR ANOTHER HALF HOUR."
Finally, the small rollercoaster shaped like a dragon. This is for little tykes, obviously. (The rides for younger people were on the east end; merry go-round, the cars with multiple steering wheels, etc. On the west end, the Zipper, the Tilt-A-Whirl, that f***ing centrifugal ride that I just don't understand why humans would allow themselves to take part in.) There were two kids who had just been seated in the center of the dragon. They were the only ones on the ride. The old, skinny man with a giant mustache and the look of a life of regret seeping out of his eye sockets didn't seem to see us as we approached the entrance. We were the only ones "in line," and were standing right in front of him. His eyes were in fact pointed right at us. Was he looking at us? Did he see us? We said "excuse me" to get what we hoped to be his attention. "WHAT?" he shouted. "What do you want?" Now, there's room for about 18 more children on this ride at this point, and no one else is in line. "Can she (my niece) get on this ride?"
"WHY?" more shouting, by the way. I realized immediately that this was not from a place of sarcasm, but because despite his age and world-beaten appearance of a man who has seen a lot and it still haunts him to this very moment, he HAS NEVER DONE SOMETHING LIKE THIS, HELP A SMALL CHILD FIND ENJOYMENT FROM A CARNIVAL RIDE. "Is she between 36 and 52 inches?" he yells, as my niece is standing next to the "you must be this tall to ride" sign. We point out that she clearly fits that size requirement/restriction. There is no response, other than he opens the gate to let her in. She climbs into the next car of the roller coaster and he shouts "PUT YOUR HANDS UP!" in the way a criminal shouts to you while you're in line in front of him at the 7-11, or a cop would shout at you if you were mistaken for that criminal at the 7-11. Either way, it was a manner that suggested he was going to shoot one of us if she didn't comply. This was to lower the bar so she wouldn't fall out of the slightly bumpy ride. Other children would approach, and this conversation would be repeated with their parents.
None of this probably surprises any of you whatsoever. I might be too harsh on what we've all come to accept. It's what I get for taking my niece to some place that's not Great America or Disneyland on a Saturday afternoon. I guess what really surprises me is that, as I went to withdraw some money so my niece could play more games for more cheap doggie shaped stuffed animals, the organizers had set up a running loop played over the ATM about the fun you could have with their entertainment needs. Like it was a corporate brand. And then I remembered one of the ladies behind the duck game (there's numbers under the rubber duckies...oh, I don't need to explain it to you), "thanks for choosing [name of company]!" Like I was leaving a fast food chain. The name was something normal sounding, 'Windy City Games,' something ordinary and seemingly harmless. And I started thinking about the edgy and hip clubs in town, the ones where you wait outside in the cold with no jacket because no one cool shows up wearing a coat and it's already 20 bucks to get in so you won't have money for a coat check, and how they're owned by, say, Allucarde Entertainment.
There's an office for these people. There's a corporate brand. "Thanks for playing the duck game, 'Windy City Games' thanks you for your patronage." This is no longer the carnival that shows up on the weekend of a holiday. This is a business.
And holding your once lit cigarette as you count change for the kids' guardians is part of your uniform!
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