Thursday, September 26

waxing poetic

On Sunday I went to a local fair. Walking through the entrance, a cornucopia of carnival before me, the familiar ferris wheel pinnacling the midway...I felt a wave of deja vu come over me. Not deja vu of former events in my life, but historical, like the deja vu of an earlier America.

And then I ate a barbecue pork sandwich and a foot-long eclair that would certainly offend even the most open-minded of the French. But if not to eat fried fatty meat and cream, why does one go to the fair?

Clapping wax
Why to ride the rides, of course. Or, as I like to say, to practice not vomiting while trying to remember why you thought getting on something called the Tilt 'n Swirl was a good plan after eating the aforementioned cheesy sandwich. And furthermore, why you paid $5 to do this to yourself.

Honestly, I've never been a huge fan of carnival rides, but not until recently did I come to appreciate the freakishness of the fair scene. Granted there were no freak show tents, not even a clown, creepy or otherwise, to be seen, but the aura of the freak show lives on under striped tent tops where carnies still tempt walkers-by with promises of huge blow up alien dolls if you can toss a golf ball into a dixie cup.

But I wasn't tempted till the wax dip hand molds booth. Dip my hand in wax to make an almost instant mold? I had to do it. But dipping my right hand wasn't odd enough for my tastes--Finneas was going under. The hot wax tender wasn't sure about getting Finneas into the wax without accidentally waxing my head too, but I hadn't come this far to walk away without an empty wax hand mold.

So down I went. A casual observer might have surmised that I was attempting to hot wax my entire arm and shoulder--and even now I'm wondering why I didn't just jump into the barrel for a cheap leg waxing. But in the end I came away with a little wax Finneas replica and, because I mentioned it would feel left out, the woman let me wax mold my other hand for a 20% discount. I chose purple and pink to color the wax...I don't know why.

After observing my wax hands sitting on my bedroom windowsill for a day, trying to evaluate why I thought I needed them so badly and not coming up with an answer, I set them on the desk of my instructor training mentor as a token of my appreciation.

It caused a bit of a stir in the office (which made the entire venture well worth it for me), but there they sit to this very day.

OneArmGirl

3 comments:

  1. I love the fairs too. I love the feeling of returning to Old New England. I cannot go to one without remembering a camel ride at a fair in Vermont many years ago, riding remarkably close to my high school girlfriend in front of her astonished parents.

    I love the story of the wax hands. What a great idea!

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  2. �� Yes, connection to eras gone by, like sledding!

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