Rikkity Tikkity Tink!

It was cold and our laughter billowed out in whispy cartoon clouds, mixing with the tart aroma of candied applies and mustard slathered pretzels. My fingers were almost frozen and I kept tap-tap-tapping my boots on the wooden steps trying to keep warm.

Half way up.

We laughed harder. More on purpose. More out of silly make believe fear.

The wooden track wobbled, shook, seemed to tilt in the air, as if the faintest breeze would topple the entire roller coaster over on it's side, and spill it into the boardwalk, a mangled erector set, glowing in the dark. The music stopped , or maybe it didn't, and up ahead of us, the white faces of instant ghosts climbed from their seats, teetering for just a moment to gain their strength, to breath again, and then the tentative laughter of those surviving this trip began again as they descended the other stairs. Free and Alive.

"Next" he shouted, gruffly arming Kimbies and I into the first seat, alcohol breath tucking us in. He started at the back.... one, two, three, twelve, thirteen, running the wooden track, slamming the safety arms down into lock, lock, lock....his dirty fingers barely grazed us, and the little train began to climb. We gave the arm a little wiggle. It bounced straight up. We slammed it down. It bounced again. We screamed. And screamed again. And went higher and higher in tiny rickety bursts of strength. We rounded the highest corner and snapped to the left. And began free falling. The two of us, elbows locked, parachuting. Choking. Huge fists on our necks, faceless fingers twined into our clothes, our hair, holding onto us by Angel's breath. We hit the bottom and slammed hard to the right, left, and I forget now, if we were shaking from the inside or the out, but I remember dying. Just before the next climb.

That was 25 years ago.

The first of many, many "never again"s.....

I woke up this morning with cotton candy in my hair. Two tattered ticket stubs stuffed in the back pocket of the crumpled jeans on the floor.

I woke up smiling.

You gotta love the fair......

Trainwrecks and other truths....

Two likened souls in the last place on earth you'd ever go....

I leaned in.

And then fell.

Suspended, for a moment in laughter...tumbling face first into... "Nice to meet you's"....

And it seems like a million years ago that we first met, flirting with fate...
Daring Mother Nature, the world at large, and our own demons to stop us. No one did.

We've driven thousands of wreckless miles chasing a fickle sun. Danced in the kitchen, on the sidewalks, in darkened corners, and under neon lights. Laughed until we were snot-nosed and wet faced and laughed again. We've traded dirty little stories for "I've never told anyone this before" secrets....the recanting tumbling out in a language perhaps only we understand. We've dreamed and pretended and smacked each other around with the truth.

We've been to the Fair and back.

Riding rickety roller coasters with broken tracks, the clickety clack of the wooden climb, an atom bomb tick-tocking at our backs. And made it to the top, again and again..
free to fall fast,
eyes closed,
into the crash.
Laughing.

Rocking the flimsy ferris wheel chariot, long arms and legs dangling mid-sky.
Rattling the safety-bar.
Laughing.

Chugging mid-way beers with the carnies, the locals, the drifters, the tourists.
Our kind of people.
All kinds of people.
Laughing

Falling through mirrors.
Laughing.


It's been a helluva ride...

The King of Dread and Other Silly Insecurities

Artwork (c) Singleton 2006

Introduction to Fear of The Unknown

I didn't start out in life all iffy, itchy, ants in my pants, scared of the dark. In fact I was a brave little cowboy at two, Peggy Lipton from the Mod Squad at ten, and probably out of this world by sixteen. No fear. My children think their generation coined that phrase. They're mistaken. We lived life by the fly. Half the cars I rode in didn't have seat belts, and we flew. Rip tides meant a great day to surf...or float...or play maniac drift wood...and we zoomed, perinwinkles and jellyfish dancing, churning under our sandy shadows. The local news announcement" "It's 11:00 p.m., Do you know where your child is?" meant put a dime in the payphone and call home...throw out the safety net, put Ziggy Stardust on one last time.

And then I rode the Zipper. It was probably 1973. There were 10 of us, and Miss Molly, of course. I wasn't allowed to ride with the boys. So Miss Molly was there, in her penny loafers, smiling, trudging behind us down the dusty aisles of the carnival. The designated driver. The designated Mama. She was in charge of getting us safely to and from the fair on this Friday night, and she believed in freedom. Let them have fun. "But is he nice?", "They're just kids", all of that...but she trailed behind us anyway, because she had to count heads on the ride home, and as many that rode in with her had to come home with her. I remember her standing there. Just past the ticket taker. Candy apple and cigarette in hand, in her moo moo and loafers, smiling at us... As we piled onto the Zipper, two by two....

Trisha and I buckled in, the cage clamping Bang! and our feet dangling forever in front of us...suspended over the dirty landscape of popcorn boxes, cigarette butts and torn ticket stubs. We laughed. And wiggled our feet and shimmied the cage. Could we rock it? We tried. It barely swayed. Our little dog pen in the sky was weighted at the bottom and our hundred pound efforts were not even tweaking the ride. So we screamed. As loud as we could. As if we were at the top of a ferris wheel reaching the heavens, on the yanking curve of a roller coaster falling from earth, we screamed. And Miss Molly just smiled.

The music blasted, not thumped. It sort of screeched and rattled against the cage. We banged. With our free arms we pounded, : " Let us out! Stop!" and we laughed. We wanted it to never end. This feeling of being jolted and snatched and flying precariously close to danger. And then we heard the noise. I think it was a boom, but like a snake, the tail end of it hissed. And the world stopped. Or at least the Zipper did. We were hanging face down, staring at the dirt, screaming. And we were almost at the top of the Zipper.

We just kept screaming. No fear. Fun. Laugh. Kick your sandal clad feet. And then one by one, as the fire grew, they were cranking the cages down towards the ground. And everyone below us was climbing out of their naughyde nightmare and leapng to the ground. We were cranked higher. To the top. And then over the top. And then face down, to Miss Molly and the circle of faces holding the net. The net? Carnival canvas bunched up in a heap, held steady by a tribe of sunburned and wrinkled men, smiling up at us, (Is this supposed to be comforting?) hollering "jump" ! You're kidding right?


It was the smoke that convinced me to do it. To reach over and bop the latch. To send us free falling, clinging to nervous laughter and each other's jeans, through the air and into the makeshift trampoline. We landed with a thud, as 8 men came to their knees and Miss Molly watched. We had road rash from the flight, or the landing, or the twisting of our 'too-cool" outfits in the process.

And then we had free passes.

"Ride anything you like."