Day: October 30, 2004

this afternoon the terrell family went to the greater baton rouge state fair to experience the wonder and majesty that is the state fair. everyone needs to experience eating greasy corn dogs and then going on the tilt-a-whirl. there is nothing quite like riding a fair attraction that was placed together by a worker making minimum wage. apparently, the fair has standards for the workers who run their rides. these worker standards seem to be as follows:

• all fair employees who operate rides must hate all kids and barely attempt to hide this hatred. it is even better if you frequently shout at kids for no apparent reason.
• all fair employees who operate rides must hate all other human beings and barely attempt to hide this hatred. an easy manner in which to display this hatred is to sneer at anyone who ever asks you a question (no matter how good the asked question might be).
• all fair employees who operate rides must be able to convey to all those who ride their rides that the operators have very little idea how to operate their rides. looking at the ride’s control in obvious dazed, confusion is a great way to make the riders worry about your skill at operating the machinery.
• all fair employees who operate rides must be more concerned with watching the things going on around them than they are with actually watching their rides. talking on your cell phone is a great way to ignore your ride.

i’m not sure how they test for these qualifications, maybe they give a personality or dexterity test to figure out who would be best in these positions. all i know from my experience at the fair today is that they seem to have done a pretty good job at getting people who meet the above qualifications.

this morning the fam and i went to see noah play a flag football game. noah was great (here comes the proud parent routine) – he caught a kick off and returned it, made the only pass reception of the game, disrupted a possible interception, and did a tremendous job blocking. the best part was enjoyed the game, which hasn’t always been true.

this game pam, adam, and i sat closer to the cheerleaders than we have ever done before. i had never understood how much entertainment we had been missing by not sitting by the cheerleaders. the group is composed of girls in second and third grade who have no actually connection to the team. they are a cheerleading squad who merely picks one team to cheer for each week. the other team is merely left without cheerleaders – left to wonder why life has so greatly rejected them and why no one wants to cheer for them. i’m not sure how they decide to cheer for each week – maybe it’s which ever color rhymes with their cheers better, or maybe it’s a coin toss, but a decision is made and that decision determines which teams gets the support of the 7 to 8 girls who have come there to cheer.

of course, this random selection apparently throws the cheerleaders off every now and then. this became apparent by the fact that every now and then the girls would forget which team they were cheering for. so one cheer which went

y.. e.. l.. l..,
y. e. l. l. everybody yell
go green, go green, go green! (noah’s team color)

by the end of the cheer the girls had forgotten which team they were cheering for and thus “green” was left out of the cheer and replaced with “who are we cheering for?”

as you can tell these girls were really into the ball-game and their spirit lifted everyone up in to the fervor of what is second and third grade flag football.