13 Feet of Glory

"Say goodbye, my one true lover. And we'll steal a lover's song. How it breaks my heart to leave you, now the carnival has gone." Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds from "The Carnival is Over"

The only thing more intriguing than whats on the nurses mind on any given day is how the carnival lifestyle still manages to attract employees. I understand the allure of the Tilt-a-whirl, the pull of the cotton candy machine, the sheer pleasure of the Fun house, but like all great thing too much of it would spoil it. The truly awesome part of being a carny would be the chance to master the powerful aphrodisiac that is midway games. Given a doctorate in skeeball, even the nurse would not be able to resist my magnetism.

What is it about winning you girls a stuffed animal at a carnival or a pizza parlour that gets you going faster than Josh Holloway shirtless on a rainy episode of LOST? Is it the prowess that is on display by the gathering of the tickets? Is it the knowledge that man has bested machine in a splendidly John Henry vs. the drill kind of a moment? Or it it the trinket procured with said tickets? Is that manufactured in Korea stuffed unicorn with a shock of purple rayon hair the ultimate symbol of undying devotion?

I do realize that some of you ladies out there are immune to the mysteries of skeeball. For you, I am truly saddened. Maybe no one ever racked up the big score in your honor, if not I will offer a trip to Chuck E Cheese, just so you know the feeling. Maybe you feel too adult to enjoy the frivolity that comes with a midway bender in which a man will spend four to one hundred times as much money trying to win a trinket as the bauble is actually worth. But the midway is no place for reason. It a Guatemalan Insanity pepper of a good time if you just let your hair down and remember what it was like to be the girl walking around with the huge stuffed bear, being envied by the rest, making men impotent in your wake, there is power in that fluff and asbestos filled mammal. So, we will throw darts at balloons, shoot an uncountable number of nearly impossible to make baskets, we will try to get a ping pong ball to land in a gold fish bowl causing unknown damage to the ichthyolite inside, and we will most certainly swing a huge mallet over head with great gusto in order to ring a bell all in hopes that our display of manly might will grant us a chance to ring your bell when the lights of the Merry-Go-Round go dim.

We, men, do all this in order to coerce you dames into sexing us up, but the carny folk are masters of these games, are they secretly cornering the market on the play-for-play issue? I kind of doubt it. I am basing my skepticism on the general state of carny dentistry and hygiene. If they could just manage to clean up their image these purveyors of passing fancy could be the Don Juans of the new millennium. Nah, that's about as likely as gas dipping back below the two dollar mark, or a Republican with a heart.

Maybe as part of "Act Like A Kid Week" we should all take in a carnival or maybe a trip to Dave and Busters, at least there we can get liquored up and win each other some unvaluable prizes. The true point would be an experiment, of course, I'd like to know how the skeeball effect you. Is it the sound of the ball rolling towards the ramp? The anticipation of the ball finding the big money? Is it the knowledge that he is doing it all to impress you? Could there possibly be a more powerful aphrodisiac than skeeball?

Are you turned on by carnival trinkets? Have you any special ones you treasure? When was the last time you were at a carnival?

Dixie Cup of Love: The Food on a Stick Vendor.