Fall Festival

Every nearly-fall my small home-town city/suburb has a fall festival, and almost every nearly-fall my family volunteers. When I was a teenager, I was always on drink duty. This involved selling soda at the city booth. The only problem--or problems--were the bees. They were everywhere and you couldn't avoid them. On the nozzles of the soda fountain, by the cups, by the cash-box, everywhere that soda could possibly have fallen. After a few years, I was finally old enough to graduate to ticket sales.

Ticket sales are usually relatively easy as long as you can do simple arithmetic and count tickets. Tonight was relatively calm. But that was mostly because of the huge storm that blew through about fifteen minutes after my shift began and lasted about 25 minutes. It was so cool to watch from the relative safety of my ticket booth. It was raining so hard the water started dripping through the weird talk-thing and the ticket slot, but beyond that I remained pretty dry. People's reactions were so varied it was funny to see. While some parents and children played and enjoyed it, some ran looking scared to melt, and others looked angry that their fun had been ruined. And the whole time the lights were blinking on and off with lightning in the background and the whole atmosphere was like something from a Ray Bradbury book.

After the storm it was back to business. And meeting my students. And meeting my twin's students. And convincing that I wasn't her.

Well, tomorrow is an early speech and debate event and I'm the only one on the bus, so I should get to bed, but it really was quite an interesting day.