At the fair

We’re staying with my mother on Manitoulin Island for a week, which we do every year, but this time around our visit coincided with the Providence Bay Fair, so the grandparents and I took the boys one evening.

The fair isn’t much like what I remember as a child. It’s comprised far more of midway rides and carnival games, sales tables with plastic guns and mass produced native crafts, far less of handmade crafts, homemade baking and preserves, and farm grown produce. It’s earlier in the summer as well, quite clearly directed more at tourists than at the local population.

Even so, I thought it would be a fun night out for my kids, and I was two-thirds right.  My youngest rode ponies and tried any ride that mimicked motorized vehicles, from monster trucks to trains to motorbikes. My middle child, tall enough far all the rides but one, literally ran between the scariest rides that would take him, burning through his tickets as fast as he could, eyes wide, as thrilled as I’ve ever seen him.

My eldest, however, a world weary cynic at the age of nine, tried the bumper cars, announced that the whole fair was boring, and asked to be taken home. His younger brothers were more than happy to take his tickets, and while they were using them, he wandered the fairgrounds, making pronouncements about how boring and stupid everything was.

The grandparents were concerned that he wasn’t enjoying himself and wanted to suggest an alternative, but I think it’s good for kids to be a part of family activities, even when those activities aren’t their favourites. So much of our culture tells them that they need to meet their own needs and interests exclusively, but being part of a family or a community means that our own preferences sometimes need to be set aside for others.

So, we didn’t make him go on any rides if he didn’t want, but we did make him stay with the family until his brothers were done with their rides. He spent the time talking with his grandparents, and pretty soon he was talking about soccer far more than he was whining, enjoying himself despite his best efforts.

By the following morning, he was talking about next year’s fair.