Misadventures: The Plague Ridden Fair
A photo of me being incredibly uncomfortable around all of these people. We left promptly after this was taken. Photo credit: My incredible friend and roommate, Elizabeth.
Each year (with the exception of the last), my town hosts its annual Fall Festival. It’s during the first full week of October, and lasts a full 7 days. Normally when I go with friends we eat to our hearts’ desires, avoid eye contact with aggressive carnies, and take photos in front of beautiful lights provided by the various carnival rides. This year was vastly different for me, and I’m okay with that. Instead I struggled with wanting to leave the comforts of my own home, and cancelled a few times before finally managing to make an appearance.
My roommate wanted us to enter into the Half Pot and had spent all week dreaming of what we would do with our winnings. With this fantasy in mind days later, the two of us dragged our feet and headed that way. On the fairly short drive, she told me that 30 of the food booths this year had pulled out due to COVID or due to the lack of volunteers. I took this as a positive sign that perhaps humanity did care about the pandemic after all.
Majority, if not all of the festival goers attending were unmasked. I wasn’t cynical about people’s general empathy and intellect when I should have been. I naively assumed that I’d see at least a handful of people masked. Instead, everyone was acting as if COVID had miraculously disappeared. My roommate and I appeared to bed the only two people wearing masks. [Note: Before anyone comes for me, I wore a mask. I only took it off for quick, socially distanced, photos.]
After we entered the Half Pot, we grabbed deep fried fair food, snapped a couple of quick photos, and left. Neither of us were comfortable with being there. That’s when I had the realization that it’s okay to break traditions sometimes…because people are gross and full of cooties.
(On the plus side, I normally bump into high school classmates that want to make small talk. This time, I remained unseen.)
Anti-Socially Yours,
Keisha