Kara at the Fair
“These tunes are from my I-Pod and they rock!” Kara screamed, bumping and grinding as she greeted the next group of riders on to the Orbiter, aka the Vomit Comet, a spider-like torture device of twisting and spinning seats that rise and fall to the rhythm of blasting music. Today that music was the gummy hip hop and grunge rock favorites of Kara, and it rocked.
The Fair was Kara’s first real job. Two weeks of minimum wage bliss. Pocket money. Corn dogs, frozen custard and funnel cakes at a discount. The steady, but harmless stares of the adult men who worked as full-time carnies. And best of all, a steady stream of kids from school to order around. Her authority was limited, mostly checking seat belts and height limits and the occasional call to Security for underage drinking, but she wielded that authority with dramatic flair.
It was only her fifth day on the job and Kara was transformed. At school her gifts were unappreciated. Her quirky looks were not well matched to the standards of sophomore beauty. She had been somewhat “stacked” (her words) since 7th grade, but lacked the curves or long legs needed to turn her ta-tas into a real asset. Instead, she teetered on the edge of between blowsy and chunky. Her main of mousy brown curls were uncontrolled unless pulled back into a scrunchy. Her round face freckled in the sun and her chin suffered from a recurring beard of acne. By the standards of the typical fifteen year old, Kara had every reason to be miserable.
Kara compensated for her plain appearance with a bold and un-checked friendliness. Walking through the halls of school she greeted everyone as if they were close friends. “Great game last night!” she would shout out to Jake, the center of the basketball team. “Love your new highlights!” she screamed to Lacey, Jake’s girlfriend. She spread this cheer to all. At lunchtime she was as likely to sit down with Sheila Walker’s clique of mostly black and Latina girls, “What’s up bitches?” as she was with the boys from the Drama Club, “What’s shakin’ girlfriends?” or even the Math Team, “Those losers from Eastside High miscalculated the derivative, no way!” Surprisingly, Kara generated minimal eye rolling from her peers. For the most part she was tolerated, as one would a stray dog begging for scraps of food.
This lack of self-consciousness served her well at the Fair. No longer begging for attention, as gatekeeper to the Orbiter she had the perfect captive audience. With her microphone headset positioned on top of her curls, a new Kara emerged that was part lounge lizard, part DJ, part carnival barker, and all diva. She had puns. “Get ready for the Orbiter, I’m your hostess Kara. I’ll be spinning the tunes and…your stomachs.” She had humor, “Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the vomit comet. Please keep your seat belts fastened and your corn dogs to yourself!” And she had power. When the fair was slow and the lines light, she would goad the riders into extra rotations, “Let me hear you scream if you want more!” She was equally animated with exiting riders, offering high fives, hugs, and her best Mae West, “come back and see me some time.”
Every night that week Kara came home bubbling with stories to share with her parents, Mike, who supervised landscape maintenance teams for the County and Deb, who was assistant manager of the local Ace Hardware. Sometimes the stories were about Kara’s classmates. “Oh my God, so Susan and Chloe who are totally BFF, must have eaten a ton of that roasted corn on a stick, because when they got off of the Orbiter, Susan puked all over Chloe’s shoes, I swear to God totally yellow and corny, and Chloe was so completely pissed off but then she started laughing and I swear, some corn started coming out of her nose…” Sometimes the stories were about strangers, “So there was this twelve year old who was acting all tough guy cholo in line but as soon as the ride starts he was totally freaking out. We almost had to stop the ride to let him off but we only can do that if we think there is a real emergency. When he got off the ride I could totally notice that he wet his pants.”
Mike and Deb were relieved that Kara was enjoying such a G-rated adolescence. They were oblivious to Kara’s status as a freak, but it was Kara’s freakishness that kept away the boys, the parties, and the other opportunities to indulge in the edgier side of teenage life. They were a bit too busy with their own lives to wonder why Kara never had friends over. She never complained. Her grades were fine. She didn’t sulk. She landed her first job all by herself. The fact that most of her co-workers were transient ex-cons and recovering meth addicts was not front-of-mind for Mike and Deb.
And neither was it for Kara.
Within the culture of the County Fair there was a deep divide between the “townies” – local kids like Kara – who worked the two weeks of the Fair then went on with the rest of their summer vacation, and the “roadies” who traveled from locale to locale all year long. The roadies were cool and jaded, sleepwalking through each day of sitting at the controls of the Orbiter, changing the oil in the funnel cake fryer, or passing out cheap stuffed hippos to successful free throw shooters. It’s hard to be animated when you host a competitive Whack-A-Mole game 12 months a year. It’s easier when you’re doing it for a couple of weeks. For their brief gig, the townies enthusiasm could be sustained. The amusement industry depended on this energy. Just like they depended on the naïve assumptions of ten year old boys who believe they can ride the Zipper four times in a row without suffering permanent vertigo. Just like their commitment to building the perception that five dollar jumbo corn dogs should be chased by six dollar root beer floats.
Kara was not like the other townies. She had the requisite enthusiasm, but her over-abundance of it made her stand out. Consistent with the County Fair Employee Manual, she was committed to both “safety” and “fun” but she took it to an extreme by her daily vocal assertions, usually over the microphone at the Orbiter that she was “working at the Fair is a BLAST!!!.” Most of the other townies avoided her. Most of the roadies, barely noticed her. The one major exception was Travis, the lead brake man on the Rockin Robin, the steel framed portable roller coaster. Travis didn’t just notice Kara. He loathed her.
Travis was six months out of the state prison where he had served 26 months for possession with intent to sell. His parole officer got him a job with the amusement company – a plumb assignment given that it required travel throughout the state, allowing him much more freedom than the average parolee. Travis shared a trailer, provided by the company, with Sal, another roadie who divided his time between the frozen custard concession and the traveling exhibit of the (stuffed) albino chimpanzee. Travis and Sal barely spoke, preferring to inhabit their respective ends of the trailer in relative silence.
In general, Travis liked to keep to himself. It was a trick he learned in prison that fit with his general outlook on life.
The exuberant bundle of energy that was Kara was more than Travis could take. The Orbiter and the Rockin Robin were adjacent to each other. For the first few days of Kara’s tenure, Travis successfully blocked her out, even when she learned his name and began to greet him whenever their paths crossed. “Hello, Travis! How are things rockin on the robin?” He would smile politely, figuring that after a day or two her energy would fade, like most townies, and she would leave him alone.
The problem was that Kara’s energy didn’t fade. His silent resistance to her charms did nothing to dissuade her. Whether she was conscious of it or not, Kara was determined to win him over. On the fourth day she had a new nickname for him, “Good morning Mr. T!” On day five, a new pun, “Did you enjoy your break from the brake!” By day six, she offered to fetch him a snack, “Hey T, want some onion rings?”
The direct question required a response.
“No thanks. I don’t like onion rings.”
“Then how about some curly fries. I love curly fries, they’re like my hair, if my hair was made out of potatoes.”
Travis grunted, and looked away.
A few minutes later, Kara appeared with two baskets of curly fries. “Here you go, some curly fries for a surly guy! Just kidding! You should trying smiling, T.”
He had a sudden flashback to prison. As a new inmate, he was tested by one of the more hardcore long-timers. “Hey pretty boy, how about a smile.” That interaction carried a threat of violence, even rape. The interaction with Kara bothered him more.
“I didn’t ask for curly fries. I didn’t ask for you to talk to me. Please shut the fuck up and leave me alone.”
Kara did not know what to do. Nobody ever talked to her that way. She might detect the occasional eye roll, but most people treated her with some level of tolerance. She gathered up the curly fries and went back to the Orbiter.
That night she got home. Mike and Deb noticed she seemed a bit more subdued than usual.
“So, Kara, tell us about your day at the Fair,” Deb asked.
“It was awesome.”
“What happened?”
“Mom. Dad. I’m totally in love.”
