Monday, April 24, 2006

Death By Fair


Not long ago, I wrote about the two-year anniversary of my going to the Azalea Festival with my friend Megan, eating an entire plate of homemade potato chips, and then developing The Stomachache From Hell, which, after an ill-conceived attempt to quell the problem by drinking several glasses of milk, ended with me being violently ill the day before my thesis defense.

One would think, then, that I would never eat homemade potato chips again, nor go anywhere near where they might be sold. Not so!

And sadly, my trip to the Chardon Maple Festival with Ben, Jeni, Joel and their kids ended in roughly the same way.

Oh, it seemed like a good idea. My diet is much healthier now, and I tend not to go so overboard-- an entire plate of chips? No, thank you, sir! I'd prefer only a chip or two. Or half a plate! Yes! Two-thirds of a plate! Turns out, though, that two thirds is still five-sixths too many, something I should have gathered when Ben started holding the plate high above my head, attempting to dump the remainder in the trash can as I climbed him, reaching for the last spiral of chips with a Gollum-like intensity. After all, this isn't Wilmington, they don't just have fairs two or three times a year here! Give me potato chips and give them to me now!

(At the height of my chip sickness, I began calling them "tater chips," and really meaning it.)

But then, to make matters worse, Jeni took me to a display of 'maple stirs,' which is just a styrofoam bowl with superheated maple syrup in it, which you stir with a tongue depressor until it reaches a peanut butter-like consistency, and then you eat it. This, too, seemed like a good idea.

But it wasn't.

By the end of my short stint at the Chardon Maple Festival, I was disoriented, ill, and so hyped up on sugar and fat that I could actually see particles in the air.

Needless to say, things ended badly.

And so, as a public service announcement to you, I would like to provide this equation:

Homemade Potato Chips + Maple Candy*= Severe illness. Who knew?

*Please note that "maple candy" can easily be replaced with "milk" in this equation, as the results are strikingly, eerily similar.

4 pipers piping:

mendacious said...

ew. poor girl.

Kristen said...

I wish i went to the Maple fest this year! I missed it! I always think the maple stir is a good idea and then you want to eat the whole thing cause it's like a whole $2 and then you don't feel so hot the rest of the night!

daisy said...

Remember the "carnival" in the mall parking lot in Wilmington? I highly recommend that one NEVER go there, eat an entire funnel cake and then ride the Gravitron. I'm just sayin'...

penelope said...

I posted a long comment on this yesterday that clearly did not take. Bastard Blogger Server. Anywho, here goes again:

This reminds me of the time I got ill at the NC State Fair from a Pseudo Bloomin' Onion. The Outback it was not. Remember in grade school when they made available large vats of unrefrigerated ranch dressing that one could access freely with the help of a handsoap-esque pump? It wasn't a good idea then, and it was an even worse idea, years later, sitting out all day in the North Carolina fall heat.

Also, I remember a second-grade field trip to the maple farm in PA where we sampled that crazy maple syrup stuff. It turns my stomach just thinking about it. And, from the same trip, I remember all of us kiddies traversing the cow barn, fearfully dodging the long line of unpredictable bovine butt flanking the aisleway. This girl Joanna Zalusky did not, alas, make it out unscathed. She got cow shit on her purple winter coat. It was so gross.