It’s Not Fair
How violence has changed the landscape of the county fair
“Mom, can you please pick me up? Now?” my very sage 13-year-old texted me from the county fair last night. “I think this might be a good time to leave.”
This was the first time she and her friends were allowed to go to the fair without a parent and my anxiety was already at Defcon 2 before they even left. The parents had all agreed that a 9:00 pick up was more than late enough in spite of the protests to the contrary.
Which was why I was so surprised to get her text at 8:00.
My daughter told me she and her friends had started noticing swarms of kids all dressed similarly in baggy pants, chains around their wastes and necks, flannel shirts and vans. “Your brother and his friends are at the fair?” I asked. I am sure she rolled her eyes at me, but that is kind of how they dress.
As our kids have grown up in a very woke town, in a very woke age, she was loathe to say what she really meant, which was that the groups of kids looked like gang members. Not wanting to judge or seem racist with her assumptions, but that is exactly what they were. Rival gangs who we later found out, had agreed to meet at the fair. In the kid’s area. To fight. The police on site quickly broke up the now hundreds that had gathered but there were murmurs that they were going to try again at 9:00. To fight. In the kid’s area. Seriously?
Then the girls saw someone from outside the fair slip a gun under the gate to evade the metal detectors that are now sadly commonplace at these events. They immediately left, reported what they saw to the police and went to wait at the school next door for their parents to pick them up. I commended them on their quick thinking as well as their decision to stay out of harm’s way rather than to stick around to witness the impending drama.
There are so many aspects of a fair that unsettle me. The rides to begin with. Not just in the “I might pee in my pants” it is so scary kind of thing, but the fact that the rides themselves, unlike permanent installations at amusement parks, are taken down, transported and reassembled at each location makes me very, very nervous. And my fears are warranted.
According to Nationwide Children’s Hospital, “A study by researchers in the Center for Injury Research and Policy found that, over a 20-year period, there were more than 27,000 injuries to kids under 18 serious enough to be treated in hospital emergency departments from mobile rides, like those found at fairs and festivals.” So, there’s that. The throngs of strangers, that in my hypervigilant, neurotic mother state trigger images of stampeding clowns. And, of course the violence. Each year the fighting seems to get worse.
And the jeopardy rises exponentially once weapons are involved.
On the way home my somewhat shaken daughter unintentionally synthesized the experience by saying, “There were balloons popping everywhere. Mom, I don’t want to hear balloons popping and be worried it’s a gun.” I know, love. Nobody does.
