Citycat's Prowlings

You Don't Look A Day Over Adolescent

So… last weekend. Peanut, Kate, E, and I went to a fair. Because, in case you haven’t picked up on this, Peanut and I LOVE fairs. (What’s not to love?) So we went down to the Waterfront in Old Town Alexandria for the Red Cross Fair.

Unlike the last fair, this was not brought to us entirely by monkeys. In fact, I think it was brought to us entirely by clinically insane people. (Which is kind of ok, because the minute I walk into a fair I lose my mind anyway, with the walking around demanding everything I see like a four year old child.) But anyway.

The thing is, the fair? Had a pirate ship. And I don’t mean a ride. I mean an actual floating in the water pirate ship. And we wanted to go SEE the pirate ship, because pirate ships are inherently awesome and you automatically turn into a superhero when you board one. (You do.) (Seriously.) So our goal was to go board the pirate ship and be superheroes. This made perfect sense in my Fair-induced mindset. I even had plans to go buy one of the sparkly light up swords, because… pirate ship. It was totally swords and superheroes all the way for me! Except…

We couldn’t find the pirate ship.

I mean, we could SEE the pirate ship. It was right over there! Across the water! But no matter how many ways we tried to get there, short of actually swimming across the inlet, we simply could not get to the ship. And as we were walking for roughly the 42nd time in exactly the same wrong direction, we maybe got a little distracted.

By the fudge sauce guy. And by that I mean the guy, who had like 40 different kinds of fudge sauce, who was giving away said fudge sauce by the spoonful. Yep! Spoonfuls! All flavors! Every kind! And the thoughts of the pirate ship and the swords and the booty and the “Arrrrrgh!” completely left our minds as we devoured spoonful after spoonful of delicious fudge sauce. Which we then bought insane amounts of.

Y’all? We are the Worst. Superheroes. Ever.

Then things just got stupid.

One of the things that this fair had a lot of was give-aways. Many places to put your name in a hat and possibly win stuff. (Or, more likely, commit yourself to marketing lists for the rest of your life). One of these was a kind of place that apparently everyone has heard of except me, where they put in windows or give you sunrooms.

(Note. I have no idea. I just don’t get this at all? Who… who lives in a house with no windows? How are there enough of these people to warrant whole companies who just… add windows? And the sun room thing? Like… you win! A… room. A whole room. They just come and drop off a room? How does this work? Who DOES THIS???)

Anyway, having a house, and far more of a clue as to what was going on with the window/room place than I, Peanut led us all into the Sunroom they had on display. (The room. On display. So like, if you won, you… took the room?? Seriously, people, I do not get this.) But we were only in the room a second when the woman (see above re: clinically insane) came running over, shooing us out.

Woman: “Out, out! You can’t be in here!”

Us: “Um. Ok?”

Woman: (snottily, at Peanut.) “What, are you entering the contest? Are you the homeowner?”

Peanut: “Um… Yes, I… have a home.”

Woman: (looks a little closer at all of us) “Wait. Are you all teenagers?”

Us: (Very amused and also? Confused). “Um, no. We are adults? All of us?

Woman: “Are, like, two of you the parents?”

And, ok people, this is definitely the most insanely ridiculous thing that has happened to me in a long time. First off, we do not look like teenagers. We are all in our mid twenties. E has actual gray hair. And why would the woman first assume that all of us were a bunch of kids, and then flip to assuming that two of us were actually the parents of the kids? None of this made any sense at all, and Kate about summed up the situation with the following answer:

Kate: (deadpan, looking the woman full in the face.) “No. If that were true, this whole thing would be a little creepy.”

The woman apologized, sort of, but also looked like she absolutely did not believe us. At all. Even as we left, I am sure she believed that we were secret teenagers trying to pretend to be older. Either that, or that we were the most screwed up family on the planet.

So none of us entered the window/room contest, we never made it to the pirate ship, and I did not buy a light up sword.

But I have five jars of chocolate fudge sauce.

posted by Citycat @ 4:55 PM