Recently my friend Jenn and I visited a traveling carnival in our DC suburb. We were on the prowl for a few good laughs and, of course, carny food. We found both, as well as a few good DC Carny Characters.
Is assumption of the risk mitigated by negligence?
Our little suburb doesn’t get much in the way of DC social action. It’s a quiet place to raise kids, or a great place to come on a Tuesday night if you want the largest selection of Korean restaurants in a 20 mile radius, but that’s about it. So, when I saw signs for a carnival, I told Jenn we had to check it out.
Check it out we did. On a Saturday night, we drove to the packed K-Mart parking lot, which was bursting at the seams with Carnival patrons. At $5 a head and $20 for 10 ride tickets (rides required a range of 3-6 tickets per person), the place was a grimy, neon-lit money pit that screamed, “You’ve got an equal chance of getting robbed, catching a communicable disease and losing a limb.”
After much prodding and a successful round of talks, the contents of which can be summed up in the phrase, “When in Rome…”, I convinced my friend that the Flying Boat was the safest, and cheapest, ride on the lot. Yes, the ticket-taker looked as if he’d done significant time for child molestation, and maybe a line of coke in the last 10 minutes, but he wasn’t running the controls.
We spent 3 tickets each to ride the boat. For about 5 minutes, Jenn and I sat facing the other half of a boat-load of carnival-goers. As the ride progressed, the boat, hinged on a steel beam far above our heads, swung higher and higher. As the bow swung up, we saw more and more of the night sky and the increasingly petrified faces of the crew facing us; as the stern swung higher, we saw more and more of the grease-stained K-Mart parking lot that would surely be our last living memory. As dutiful DC Carnival – Goers, we screamed and yelled ‘Woo-Hoo’; Jenn tried to hide her nausea.
Lights, Twirling Tea Cups, … Is that a baby in a cotton candy booth?!
After the boat, we took a stroll around the Carnival. Every booth, ride and ticket stand was lit up with neon signs, announcing the Zipper, the Twirling Tea Cups, and Funnel Cake. Covered electrical cords and water hoses snaked from booth to booth, ride to ride. The smell of mechanic’s grease, deep-fried confections and porta-potties mingled to form a disconcerting haze that hung low in the air.
Early to mid-twenties mothers of 3, dressed in skin-tight low-rise jeans and rayon tube tops carried and wheeled their toddlers and infants followed by shady-looking men whose pants sagged shamelessly. The children begged for more tickets and funnel cakes, and the tweens ventured out to carouse and feign independence.
Somewhere between the funnel-cake stand and a cute local cop sent to show presence, Jenn and I stopped in our tracks. We looked around in astonishment that we were the only ones in the crowd who found the sight remarkable. We had encountered our first Carnival Character:
The Second Generation Carny.
There, among the lights and commotion, was a Carny that would make his mother proud. In a glass enclosure, surrounded by carnival confections, this Character munched on cotton candy and Lord knows what else. Unsupervised, propped up in a plastic high-seat three feet from the floor, left with a year’s supply of cotton candy and his own devices, the scene was a social worker’s nightmare. This is the stuff Law & Order episodes are made of.
A semi-formal affair.
As the adrenaline high wore off and the neon lights had sufficiently burned our retinas, Jenn and I discussed whether the funnel-cakes or candy apples were safer to consume. Neither of us had health insurance at the time, so we decided to call it a night despite the fact that we had four Carnival tickets left. Jenn couldn’t be convinced to ride the Flying Boat a second time. So, for a few minutes, we stood in the middle of the small Carnival and took in the bizarre and fantastical sights for a few more minutes.
I turned my head just in time to see that I was completely under-dressed for this particular carnival. Apparently, the appropriate attire was a brightly-colored polyester semi-formal dress topped off with heels and an attitude, which was to be used on the funnel-cake stand guy. Posted up at the stand window were the Carny Carousers, and these gals were fishing.
Jenn and I had had enough. We wrote the remaining tickets off as collateral damage and trudged back to the car. As we pulled out of the parking lot, I wondered if the Carny Characters traveled with the Carnival, or if they were different DC Characters when not under the influence of the neon lights and deep-fried food.
DC Characters 
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