Sybil Bruncheon's "Ordinary Housewives & Their Extraordinary Adventures!'... Millie and Jane...

Isn't it strange how sometimes a seemingly innocent afternoon chore can suddenly, oh so suddenly veer into quite a different thing?... for instance, my bridge pals Millie Jankowski and Jane Plynth were asked to check out the county fair's amusement park rides for the Safety Committee at our PTA. There had been the usual breaches of licenses and certificates that one expects from circus and carny persons, especially when they show up at the town bureau in stained tank top t-shirts (I believe they call them "wife-beaters"). I'm sorry, but soiled hands, grimy fingernails, and too many tattoos of anchors wrapped in thorns, skulls smoking cigarettes, and words like "Mother", "Git Lost", and "Be My Beezle-Bubba" are NOT the sort of thing one should be displaying at the Town Manager's desk... especially at 8am.

Anyway, Millie and Jane along with several other of the concerned mothers went down on the opening morning of the Radnor County Fair to inspect the novelty booths, the concession stands and their foodstuffs, the amusement tents and their performers and inhabitants, and of course the rides! Each of the ladies was given her own clip board and a several page questionnaire to evaluate and either praise or criticize each aspect of the fair... on a scale of 1 to 10. Interestingly, the food concessions placed rather high in the scales; hot dogs were actually kosher and fairly pricey, cotton candy was spun in sterile and hygienic hoppers, popcorn was freshened every half hour, all dairy products (ice cream, etc) were kept safely at ice cold temperatures, and soft drinks were provided only by reputable corporations and not bottled in out-of-the-way locations like Borneo, Chad, or Buttpoke, Wisconsin.

Even the rides all seemed to pass inspection; bolts were tight, levers reliable, ratchet chains unrusted, wheels, pulleys, and rails all clean and shiny!... only the Devil's Delight Roller Coaster seemed to be problematic... you see, at one point on the ride, on the way down from the first major hill, there stood an arch under which the train would hurtle, carrying the screaming passengers! The arch was elaborately (and luridly!) painted with a smiling Satan, nearly naked and ferociously handsome and muscular, surrounded by dozens of leering imps, gnomes, elves, quanta-bobbies, and oblong garden vegetables all dancing , laughing, and making rude gestures at the passengers below. Flames, smoke, pitchforks of various lengths, and the usual "You're Going To Hell" paraphernalia were also scattered about in the mural... along with a tinny recording of raucous laughter, terrifying shouts, roaring thunder, tuneless organ music, and barnyard sounds.

And it was there just as they passed that an unexplainable phenomenon would occur! People would suddenly feel their undergarments groped, yes! GROPED... and even pulled up! Rather ENERGETICALLY! For men, there was the discomfort of having their "personal parts" suddenly mashed into their underpants, not so bad if they were wearing boxers, but with briefs, the sensation might be quite uncomfortable, eliciting bellows of anger and pain... or shrieks from men of a more... um... sensitive nature!

The ladies on the other hand, did not find the experience at all disquieting! In fact, they responded more often with yowling laughter... When asked afterwards what they felt under the archway as they hurtled by, they often blushed, looked nervously at each other and down at the ground, straightened their rumpled dresses, and retreated quickly to the foot-long hot-dog counter... with extra-spicy mustard!

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Sybil Bruncheon’s MY MERRY MEMOIRS... (Chapter 23)...

...when I was very young, I went to the Lucas County Fair every August!... for entire days at a time. I loved all the sights and sounds, especially at night!... the long strings of colored lights and mismatched bulbs draped between the carnival rides and novelty tents.... the tawdry calliope music jumbling different melodies against each other, the arcade games with their bells ringing, the shooting gallery pings and bangs, the laughing and screeching on the tilt-o-whirl, and the wooden ratchety roar of the roller coasters. I was mesmerized by the mysterious gypsy fortune tellers, the handsome and sweating barkers, and the wranglers who ran the rides and did the heavy lifting around the grounds...

When I was about 12, I asked a nice man with a big smile and a thin mustache who was standing near one of the Belgian waffle stands how I could get some job there with all the traveling folks that moved across the country along the carny circuit together..... maybe I could just start out as a helper in the cotton candy trailer? He looked down at me with great humor and gentility, lifted his crisp boater to mop his glistening brow and the thinning hair that was trying to stay carefully combed, and murmured, "Darling girl! Look over at our Miss Gloss! Now THAT'S what a cotton-candy hostess looks like! You need to have the look!! The LOOK!!!....now run along and stay out of trouble!".... then he winked at me and smiled even more broadly with a warm and faintly sexy chuckle, and a twinkle in his eye...

Many years later, I ran into Miss Gloss... she had the same hair-do, had married a dentist in Toledo, and had gotten a job in a grade school cafeteria kitchen serving chipped beef, chicken tetrazzini, and creamed corn to children at Our Lady of The Vapors Academy.... (Miss Gloss was always so efficient, so rapid in the execution of her duties, so quick to dash about the cafeteria serving everyone that she eventually was given the nickname "Flying Butt-ress!".... it was scrawled on bathroom walls for years after her retirement...along with loving portraiture.... and anatomically correct sketches of the football team)

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