Very exciting weekend. I went to New Hampsheire to visit Justine. Saturday evening we went to the county fair. It was like any other traveling carnaval except for a few unique differences. For one, they had a traveling side show..."bat boy." I wasn't aware that they had side shows anymore. I thought the whole bat boy, bearded lady era was over. Justine, her brother Matt and I were looking for a ticket booth when we heard: "Step right up and see the incredible Bat Boy! Standing 3 feet tall and only 90 pounds the 27 year old was shunned by his entire town." All three of us stopped. What was this!?! We turned to see two girls exit the tent chins dropped and eyes wide. We casually strolled over and observed the situation. I asked the two girls if it was worth the dollar the announcer was making everyone pay. They looked at me but no words came out. The man they were standing next to said "I think it is, they sounded pretty convincing." Justine and I looked at each other. What kind of joke was this? I felt really bad. This poor guy was on tour because he looked like a bat. If I looked like a bat I wouldn't go on tour so everyone could oggle over my ugliness. The three of us decided to pay a buck and see this so called "bat boy." I mean, he has already had a thousand or so people stare at him, what difference could three more make. Besides, maybe he could use the money to buy a house somewhere so he wouldn't have to travel with the carnavel any more. We entered the tent and walked causously behind the wooden wall. Sitting on a box against the wall was a small fellow dressed in black. He had tattoos down both his arms and he had a gottee that resembled upside-down devil horns. The little dude also had black rings around his eyes. The people in front of us were asking him questions. Bat boy looked up and greeted us as we entered. We all said hi. He didn't look like a bat to me. He was just a petite man who had put makeup around his eyes and worn black. Justine questioned innocently "Where are your wings?" Bat boy said he didn't have any. What a rip! No wings, no dollar. Honestly, he didn't even look like a bat. He seemed like a nice enough guy, but I can see nice guys without paying a dollar.

The other aspect that made this fair abit different was all the farm animals. There were cows everywhere! I met one too. Matt told us there was a 7 foot tall bull so we thought what the hell, he can't be worse than bat boy. When we arrived at the bull's dwelling I reached up to tentitively pet his gargantic head. When my finger came in contact with the bull's fur both of its ears flung forward. I didn't know what that meant but I didn't want to take any chances so I resumed my previous activity of just observing his gigantic eye ball. It was much larger than any other I had ever seen before. In the same neighborhood lived some swine, donkeys, and cows. Justine's dad and brother decided to go to the oxen pull. Justine and I passed. Watching a pair of oxen pull a concrete block a few inches for two hours didn't appeal to either of us.

Before the oxen pull Matt went on the pirate ship with us. The rule was: the louder you were on the ride the longer you got to ride. Well we had a group of little exciteable girls in the group in front of us so we were in line for abit longer than expected. The guy running the ride was a regular free style rapper. We watched him in the booth hollering out the directions for the ride rap style. When the ride started for the group before us the booth man started breaking it down. He was dancing in there like there was no tomorow. We couldn't stop laughing. I guess if I had to work there all day I would make the job as fun as possible too. The ride stopped for the third time and just when we thought it was our turn...the damn thing started swinging again. One of the men on the ride turned to us in the line and bellowed out "You all better go home cause we ain't ever getting off." After what seemed like an hour the screaming girls ran out of steam and the ride stopped. Some of riders staggered off...they had been trapped on that ride for over 10 minutes.

I turned around to see if there were any potential screamers behind us...I didn't want this to be the last ride I rode. We got a good seat and pulled the bar down. The ship started swaying. As soon as the first swing came Matt screeched out the most high pitched scream I had ever heard. I soon realized that he enjoyed screaming like that. I was sitting next to him and I thought I was going to loose hearing in one ear. What motivated him to do such a thing? After observing everyone in our group to see if any of them would be screamers I never thought I had to search within our group. Matt, of all people. At one point he was the only one screaming. But he was loud enough for all of us to stay on the ride for three weeks. Matt must have been messing up the booth man's groove because we only rode for 5 minutes. The ship came to a stop and over the intercom we heard "Thats it y'all, exit towards the wall. Don't be offended, your ride time has ended." This guy was off his rocker...he was the funniest ride operater I had ever encountered.

We went to lift the bar but it wouldn't budge. Everyone was getting off the ride but we were stuck. We were laughing so hard at the ride operater that we couldn't focus on lifting the bar. We are going to have to ride again, I thought. I didn't think I could have survived another scream from Matt or rhyme from operater man. If there was a hell on earth that would be it. We sat helplessly stuck in the seat still laughing. At this point we were laughing at the fact that we couldn't get out. Acually I don't even know what we were laughing about. A voice came from above; "Push down and lift." Halleighluya! I looked up for a heavenly light coming from the clouds or a figure in the sky where the vioce was coming from. But all I saw was an irrate ride operator.

I discovered something interesting later that night. You know the rides that spin you around really fast in the air? Well it really hurts when you hiccupp on a ride like that. So if you have the hiccupps than aviod those kinds of rides.

Over and out.