As the summer season rolls continues, we have, much to the delight of literally three to fifteen million people, carnival season, festival season and all the lovely picnics you could imagine in local neighborhoods and at local churches.
And this brings me to discuss one of the true treasures we have in the US and A- the carnival worker. Oh you know who they are. You love them. Maybe some of you have been drunk and literally loved them (although on my jack and coke scale you would be past death level to have to do something this extreme. Like a 18. 18 Jack and cokes might make this excusable. On second thought, no. If you have ever hooked up with a carnie, you are doing wrong with your life). And you know who these people are. Carnies are easily known as carnies based on their general carnieness. They have a cigarette in their mouth or on the ready in their hands at all time, they stare listlessly off into the distance constantly which is also their style when operating that rickety old scary ride (about which your Dad always says, "Must be totally safe. Do you really think they would let all these kids on it if it weren't safe?" Yes Dad, I do think they might not be safe. These machines weren;t built by NASA employees in their down time) or taking your money so you can play their rigged carnival game. , they have some sort of tattoo related to America a la the bald eagle drinking whiskey with guns it its talons. These people are America.
Yet one thing that I have always been perplexed about is just how one ends up becoming one of these carnival workers. It's almost like the old joke about naming your kid Jeeves so he would become a goddamn butler, which is basically like telling your child you hate them (Ace, Buck, Icarus...those names equal pure love). Carnies might start off from the same path, receiving names like Riaan, Fred, Arrork, Botswana, Namibia, Rwanda (alright so I just started naming African countries. It was easier that way for all of us. Trust me.) But somehow I don't get the feeling that the path to carniedom follows this route:
1)Normal middle class upbringing, complete with high school, college, and taking MBA classes at night.
2) Become a carnie.
That would be fucking ridiculous.
I have a feeling like it's more like this
1) Found in a dumpster by nuns during infancy
2) Given an odd name since nuns, realistically have little or no contact with the actual world, nor do they know they are making you destined to become a carny.
3) Get your first tattoo at three. Also develop a lifelong dependance on oxycontin, whiskey, cigarettes and strippers, but slightly later, like at 10, on a field trip to a meat packing plant where you seperated from the group and went to a strip club.
4) Burn the orphanage down.
5) Work for a carnival. Your skillset is perfect and boy did you ever trick the manager of the carnival to agree to pay you in all the corndogs you could eat. That fuckin moron.
I mean, think about it, there are a number of blue collar jobs which can still place people in a whole different strata than the carnival worker. But at the same time, is the carnival worker not as beautiful and majestic as a soaring bald eagle in terms of its representation of America?
Carnies with good social skills get promoted to being a roadie.
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