Taking my kids to the fair

When I was a kid, I looked forward to the one glorious week each year that the Fall Fair came to town in almost the same way I looked forward to Christmas.

In my hometown, the fair transformed a large patch of grass, an even larger parking lot and old, tired buildings into a magical place for kids. Today, so many years later, I can still remember the excitement I felt when I knew I was going to the fair.

Because of my daughter’s singing competitions, we likely get to as many fairs as any family in Ontario, so I have ample opportunity to compare the fairs of my youth to the fairs of today. Perhaps it’s not surprising, but in most ways, the fairs and the fair experience for my kids are exactly the same as they were for me.

The rides were the big thing when I was a kid and that’s still the case today. My kids can’t wait to get on anything that goes around too many times, goes too high or too fast. I can barely watch them without feeling queasy, but they never slow down and have to be forced to take breaks.

Many of the rides from my youth are still going, like the Scrambler and the Zipper. The Himalaya is still going too, impossibly with what seems to be the same DJ, taunting riders with his trademark, “Do you want to go faster?”

Kids scream “Yes!” and adults whimper, “No, not really.”

When I was younger I never worried about the safety of the rides, but being a parent has changed that for me. At one fair this year, I noticed a giant dent in the corner of a metal barn that seemed ridiculously close to the nearest ride. It’s hard to completely overlook a thing like that.

The games with the really big prizes are still unwinnable and the easy games have prizes that aren’t worth winning. I remember my dad telling me I shouldn’t waste my time with any of the games because the game that cost a dollar to play might net me a prize that cost ten cents to manufacture, even if it was six feet tall.

When I came home one year with a mystery prize that I learned was a “backscratcher,” he laughed at me, but I was undeterred. My kids already ignore me in a similar fashion and will someday, undoubtedly come home with equally worthless prizes. It seems no kid ever can resist the temptation of horrible fair games.

The food may actually be worse now than it was then or perhaps I just didn’t notice that they were frying both butter and Mars bars. Nope, I can’t believe I would have missed that.

Fairs still have agriculture on display, and for many I’m sure that’s a big part of their fair experience. My kids aren’t any more interested than I was in cows, goats, sampling butter milk or seeing a ribbon on a giant pumpkin, so we tend to avoid these areas completely.

I think I see the fair now the way my parents did-a huge cash grab with little to nothing of real entertainment value.

But, like my parents, I realize that fairs aren’t for me, they’re for kids.

And to a kid, the fair is pure magic.

Still.