THE FAIR

Thursday night, I went to the State Fair for the first time ever. Since I'd never been before, when we first arrived, I was FLIPPING OUT. I'm talking exclamations of wonder and jumping up and down and pointing like a three-year-old who thinks she's in a wonderland. Overall, I was in disbelief at how cool this place was and how I had never been before, and I wished I had come sooner. For dinner, I ate chicken on a stick for the first time and loved it.

I marveled at everything and laughed at things that probably weren't funny, and I just had a ball. Then we bought our tickets for the rides. It was $2 Thursday, so $20 got me 10 tickets (so I could go on 10 rides!), and that was FAB. But after I purchased the tickets, I realized how quickly my money was flowing from my hands and I started wishing that I didn't have to give up so much to get so little in return.
We went on the giant slide and it was super. Then we made our way down to the Ferris Wheel, and it was my first time on a Ferris Wheel, and it was terrifying but wonderful. Mostly all the rides were just too short, though, and you'd think, "OK WOW, This is going to be awesome!" when you were getting on. Then a few blinks later, it was over, and you are just left there like, "...really? That's all?"
So you go on another ride.

View from the top of the Ferris Wheel

We went on "Freak Out", and it was horrific. My friends tried to convince me it wouldn't be that bad, but as we stood in line and I watched the people before me being flung around at an obscene height and parallel to the ground, I started regretting my decision. When we got on, I tried to convince myself it was going to be ok, but within ten seconds of the ride starting, I had decided to just brave my way through it. I held my breath and scrunched my face up and tensed my whole body and never opened my eyes the whole time, just wishing it to be over. I kept thinking, "I didn't want to go on this! Why did I let them talk me into it?!" But they had said it was "breezy" and fun. {it wasn't. they remembered incorrectly.} I thought I was going to faint or throw up or die and I was kinda mad that they had talked me into it, and that I had wasted a ticket on that terrible thing. But I was also glad that at least I could now say I had done it, I had ridden the awful ride and people would think I was cool for having braved it and come out on top.
We continued on several rides such as the Tilt-a-Whirl, Crazy Mouse, some spinny thing, and then the slide again-- all much less terrifying than the Freak Out.
I started realizing that we were the only ones screaming and laughing on the rides. Everyone else had straight faces during and after the ride, like they were numb to the exhilaration and adrenaline. The more I looked around, the more I saw unhappy people trudging around a fair, eating too much and riding these stupid rides, and getting absolutely no joy out of it. I, the Fair Virgin, was having the TIME OF MY LIFE (with a couple exceptions) looking at all the stuffed animal prizes, and bonding with the animals in the Petting Zoo, and screaming at the top of my lungs when the Tilt-a-Whirl flung me around unexpectedly. They, the ones who had obviously been there before, seemed to be doing everything aimlessly. And it was terrifying and depressing.
These guys came up to us asking us to kiss them for a scavenger hunt (we didn't). Creepy ride worker dudes hit on us. We almost stepped in puke. The majority of the fairgrounds smelled like fecal matter, beer, and fried things, all mingled together. People were doing everything they could to get you to try THEIR game or eat THEIR food and it was just exhausting being constantly pulled in four directions.
At the end, we went on this water ride. And it was disgusting. We got SOAKED in this nasty brow water that smelled like wet wallpaper. And we proceeded to walk around dripping wet.

Feeling nasty after the water ride

We bought overpriced cotton candy and sno-cones and funnel cake and suddenly the $50 I had brought with me (just in case I needed money for other things later in the week) was gone. I WASTED FIFTY DOLLARS.
And it was terribly disheartening and I can't help but overanalyze it all and think about it as a metaphor for the life of sin. Not that I am sin-free or perfect, but I live my life trying to run away from sin and seek the Lord, not embrace sin and live in its tangles.
It made me sad for people who live like that, who give away too much in exchange for nothing at all, and it reminded me of the Pleasure Island scene in Pinocchio.
Can we just praise God that He gives us a way out of that?! Because that is incredible and hope-inducing.