Miss Rutabaga says “get a funnel cake for your water buffalo”

So the town we kind of live in just had a festival. (I say “kind of” because we pay utility bills to this town, but our address and school district is in another town. Tax time is real fun, y’all.) Anyways, we’ve heard amazing things about said festival, but we’ve never been in the two years we’ve lived here. We finally decided to give it a try, which made me realize I need to establish my own festival.

If you’ve never been to a small town festival, let me break it down for you. There are basically three and a half categories:

1. The knick knack lane, where local craft makers display their wares. Usually these are in the forms of boards that say cutesy things like “live, laugh, love” and “no trespassing.” Or there are a variety of ceramic animals you can display on your front porch: ceramic cats, ceramic geese, ceramic water buffalo, etc. And you are required by Craftmakers Law to dress these ceramic critters in ridiculous outfits, which another craft vendor is happy to provide.

2. Food truck alley. You’ve got your deep fried hot dog on a stick truck, your deep fried hush puppies truck, and if you’re looking for something healthier, your deep fried veggies truck served with a side of ranch for dipping. Because it’s the midwest, and ranch is king. Also there are funnel cakes, because apparently the universe will explode if there are no funnel cakes.

3. Rides and games road. I like some kinds of rides, like roller coasters. But given the fact that these rides are only up for a few days in a random parking lot, roller coasters are not what’s happening. These are the rides designed to spin you around like crazy until you throw up your funnel cake, at which point you go buy a replacement funnel cake (see previous statement about the universe exploding if funnel cakes don’t happen), and then you go on another ride, and the cycle repeats.

The half category is entertainment. The day we went, there was nothing happening. Entertainment usually consists of musical acts that were popular a few decades ago. There’s also the traditional Random Vegetable pageant. No, this is not a pageant for vegetables. It’s a beauty pageant for high school girls, but the festival is always named after some random vegetable. So the winning girl would be crowned Queen of the Rutabagas or (insert other random vegetable here). And then Queen Rutabaga and her attendants are usually involved in a parade where they practice the art of slow waving at the crowds.

Anyways, so we went to the small town festival. We both avoided the rides because we didn’t feel like throwing up. As previously mentioned, there was no entertainment scheduled. The knick knack lane did not appeal to us, as we have no need for a decorative ceramic water buffalo on our porch. So all that left was the food. We managed to find the one food truck that was not deep fried, but it did have zucchini in everything. So we had a zucchini brownie, which tasted good initially, but it did a number on our stomachs later.

As we were leaving, we were discussing what kind of festival would be more to our liking. I realized that the problem with festivals for me is that I am an introvert. And festival activities are more geared toward extroverts.

“Maybe I need to start an introvert festival,” I thought. “There could be library tents with quiet spaces to go read, and Netflix booths where we could binge watch stuff quietly. The food trucks can stay, but we need delivery service that we can order online to be delivered to our part of the library tent so we can keep talking with other people to a minimum.”

I got excited about this idea for a hot minute…until I realized that I had nothing to motivate my fellow introverts to actually come out and enjoy the festival. All these festival activities can be enjoyed at home.

But I’m okay with the fact that my hypothetical festival is already a bust. I like being at home. I suppose I could enhance my at-home festival experience by investing in a deep fryer. Or I could always find a recipe for making funnel cakes.