WordSisters

Category: Humor

  • Another way to see the Minnesota State Fair

    2013 MN State Fair
    2013 MN State Fair

    A few weeks ago, Ellen, wrote about her experience of the Minnesota State Fair.

    Jody and I were not loyal fair goers until we had the children. Crystel’s birthday falls on September 4 and the State Fair soon became an activity that we incorporated into her birthday week.  You might expect that a middle-aged person and an 11-year-old girl see the State
    Fair differently.  Because it is part of her birthday celebration, Crystel chooses what we see and the order in which we see it.

    7-years old with his turkey leg.
    7-years old with his turkey leg.

    Over the years not much has changed. Aunt Amie continues to accompany us as she has done every year.

    Since we often enter the fair from the west side the children’s barn is our first stop. Antonio and I skip it, using this time to get our turkey legs – regardless of the hour.

    This year, Crystel stopped in the barn only long enough to snap a picture of a cow for Mama Beth, who grew up on a farm with 50 cows. The kids don’t understand the distinction between growing up on a farm and being born in a barn, so
    they usually tell people the latter about their mother. . . and Jody doesn’t
    correct them.

    Butterfly garden at age 7
    Butterfly garden at age 7

    Even though Aunt Amie is a vegetarian she doesn’t scrunch up her nose at us devouring our humongous turkey legs.

    Taking a right, we walk immediately to the Haunted House. I sometimes think the haunted house is the only reason we come to the fair.

    Crystel has gotten big enough that she can no longer ride on Aunt Amie’s back digging her head into her shoulder blades so she can’t see what she doesn’t want to see. Now she’s progressed to walking next to Aunt Amie, though I can’t tell you what exactly happens inside the haunted house.  I am the keeper of bags, purses, and extra clothes who sits outside contentedly people-watching. What happens inside the haunted house stays inside the haunted house.

    After ugly comes pretty. The butterfly garden is a must after the haunted house. Crystel’s yearly goal is to see how many butterflies’ she can get on her person.

    Butterfly garden at 9-years-old. The hat is to draw more butterflies.
    Butterfly garden at 9-years-old. The hat is to draw more butterflies.

    This is cotton candy time for me and Antonio.

    The Giant Slide is the first time that Aunt Amie and Jody get a breather. I grab a gunny sack and follow the children.

    If our timing is right, there might be a dog show to see after the Giant Slide.

    Nothing is better than your own bag of cotton candy.
    Nothing is better than your own bag of cotton candy.

    By now, we have eaten snow cones, corn dogs, deep fried cheese curds, deep fried battered vegetables, sweet corn, and Sweet Martha’s cookies. Time for the Midway and a couple of rides.

    We have one last item to do before leaving the fair. That is to get Aunt Amie wet on the log chute. It’s not the State Fair if she goes home dry.

    As you see we have not visited one educational building, saw not one piece of fine art, or watched any fair animals being judged. Maybe next year.

    2010 State Fair
    2010 State Fair

    This year, I visited the State Fair like a child.

  • Because You Need a Good Laugh

    The following list originally appeared in 1999 in the Washington Post as winners of a “Funniest Analogies Ever Written in a High School Essay Contest”

     My favorites are #2, 9, and 25.  What are yours?

    1. Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two sides gently compressed by a Thigh Master.

    2. His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking alliances like underpants in a dryer without Cling Free.

    3. He spoke with the wisdom that can only come from experience, like a guy who went blind because he looked at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it and now goes around the country speaking at high schools about the dangers of looking at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it.

    4. She grew on him like she was a colony of E. coli, and he was room temperature Canadian beef.

    5. She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like that sound a dog makes just before it throws up.

    6. Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.

    7. He was as tall as a six-foot, three-inch tree.

    8. The revelation that his marriage of 30 years had disintegrated because of his wife’s infidelity came as a rude shock, like a surcharge at a formerly surcharge-free ATM machine.

    9. The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn’t.

    10. McBride fell 12 stories, hitting the pavement like a Hefty bag filled with vegetable soup.

    11. From the attic came an unearthly howl. The whole scene had an eerie, surreal quality, like when you’re on vacation in another city and Jeopardy comes on at 7:00 p.m. instead of 7:30.

    12. Her hair glistened in the rain like a nose hair after a sneeze.

    13. The hailstones leaped from the pavement, just like maggots when you fry them in hot grease.

    14. Long separated by cruel fate, the star-crossed lovers raced across the grassy field toward each other like two freight trains, one having left Cleveland at 6:36 p.m. traveling at 55 mph, the other from Topeka at 4:19 p.m. at a speed of 35 mph.

    15. They lived in a typical suburban neighborhood with picket fences that resembled Nancy Kerrigan’s teeth.

    16. John and Mary had never met. They were like two hummingbirds who had also never met.

    17. He fell for her like his heart was a mob informant, and she was the East River.

    18. Even in his last years, Granddad had a mind like a steel trap, only one that had been left out so long, it had rusted shut.

    19. Shots rang out, as shots are wont to do.

    20. The plan was simple, like my brother-in-law Phil. But unlike Phil, this plan just might work.

    21. The young fighter had a hungry look, the kind you get from not eating for a while.

    22. He was as lame as a duck. Not the metaphorical lame duck, either, but a real duck that was actually lame, maybe from stepping on a land mine or something.

    23. The ballerina rose gracefully en Pointe and extended one slender leg behind her, like a dog at a fire hydrant.

    24. It was an American tradition, like fathers chasing kids around with power tools.

    25. He was deeply in love. When she spoke, he thought he heard bells, as if she were a garbage truck backing up.