It never ceases to amaze me the type of individuals a fair and/or fireworks brings out. It’s like they saved up all their camel cash all year long to spend $6 on a funnel cake, $50 on unlimited rides and $40 on games. In the end all they have to show for are Jamaican monkeys:
I know they thought this is what they were going to win, a 5′ pastel color monkey or a banana with mustache:
Additionally, I am confident that Old Navy no longer makes jean shorts but jean underwear. Hoochie mamas from age 9 to 60 were out in full force and the uniform du choix was the jean underwear. Look, I consider myself with it and if the hemline is going up, fine; but it shouldn’t be the ho’ line. The below picture doesn’t even convey how short the shorts were. This girl was a rebel and pieced together a bandana and paired it with a denim maxi pad to get the following “look”.
The Soccer Ball
I’m not proud of this and I didn’t plan on conning a church but my kids come first and sometimes we all are in the gray area of morality. Not to throw my oldest under the bus but to throw him under the bus, this was his idea and I was proud of it. For 4th of July, a nearby church had an American trivia game at the park we planned to watch fireworks at. They were giving out free stuff, like really good free stuff. My oldest P, caught word that the next trivia game would be giving away a U.S. soccer ball as the prize.
“Mom, they are giving away a soccer ball! You should play. No, no! Let’s both play then at least one of us will win it!” He said conspiratorially, using his fingers to walk me through the logistics.
My moral compass kicked in for a split second then a little fat devil came crashing down it. I don’t know why my devil is fat, he just is and I needed a fat one to allow enough weight to crush the compass.
“I’m down. I’ll check it out now,” I said determined.
I walked over to a very fashionable man in his 30’s that was with the church. He was rockin’ salmon pink muted Bermudas, vulcanized tennis shoes and a black v-neck t-shirt.
“What time is your next trivia? I have to win the soccer ball for my son,” I said which translated read “You have no option as you will be putting me in as a contestant.”
“And your name is?”
“Hot Mess”
“Nice to meet you. Yeah, after the raising of the flag.”
“Well what time is that?”
“At 8 PM.”
“Ok, I’ll be back. Hold my place,” I said and walked away.
In case my son wasn’t my chosen opponent, I needed to win this. I pulled out my phone and began to Google “things that happened on July 4th” and “July 4th history”. I am ambitious and no one else was winning this stupid soccer ball.
What seemed like an eternity, the time had come for the trivia. I threw down my Louis and pretended to be a boxer, cracking my neck from right to left and doing hand stretches. My son shot me a death look like ‘don’t do that, you’re embarrassing yourself.’
There were 5 questions. If it were real you were to move to the right. If it were fake you were to move to the left. This confused me because I didn’t know if it were my left or the host’s left.
My research payed off because I got the first question right. None of the remaining questions were from my research and I had to rely on how much my ADD brain had paid attention in History class during the 80’s and 90’s.
“Real or fake,” the host began on question #3. “Thomas Jefferson kept 2 caged bears on the lawn of the White House?”
‘Wait. What? Well this is clearly false. This kinda’ shit only happened on estates like Neverland or the Spelling manor when it was the Spelling manor.’
I slid to the left to denote it was fake while my son slid to the right.
“It’s REAL!” The host said like he was Steve Harvey on Family Feud.
“WHAT? How is that real?” I protested.
The host just shrugged his arms.
In the end I won by 1 or 2 points. My son, not respecting the con till the end, followed me to the prize table and demanded, “pick the soccer ball!” I gave him a look of ‘shut the hell up!’
I quickly grabbed the ball and mall-walked away before they had time to rescind the prize. There weren’t any rules on playing against family members but I didn’t want to be made an example of and told they were taking my ball.
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