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I took my family to a small-town carnival this past weekend. You know the kind—they travel from town to town in the spring and summer, and it’s 10 rides, 300 food stands, a bunch of game booths to donate money to the carnival owner and then random gyms and churches and bicycling clubs from the area that are trying to drum up business.
I’ve grown to not like going to those things very much because it costs pretty much the same amount of time, effort and money as going to an actual good theme park. But when I was back in active addiction, I absolutely loved these things. They were perfect places to go and get blasted as the kids were entertained. I would usually have some dried goods in me already—that’s DRUGS for the amateurs out there—and then I would just crush beers all evening. My wife would drive us home so I didn’t have to worry about that. She would give me a side eye once in a while. But for the most part… it was summer, everybody would end up overheated and tired, so my drunkenness often slid under the radar.
Until one especially hot night in New Jersey. New Jersey is a wild state because the old joke is so true about one person saying they used to live in New Jersey, and someone would respond, “Oh yeah? What exit?” It’s 10 million towns, one mile apart from each other on the Garden State Parkway, and those carnivals would just inch their way down the state. My last summer of active addiction, I feel like we went to the same town carnival every weekend for three months in a row, just one exit south on the Parkway each time.
Well, on that night, my oldest daughter was almost 3 years old and she wanted to get on the kiddie Ferris wheel. All of the rides at these carnivals seem like they might go up in flames at any moment. But this one seemed especially rickety. She wanted to get on it, though, and what did I care? I was so obliterated that I could barely function.
So she got on and the thing was just wobbling and stopping and starting in a way that my eyes began to pop out of my head a little bit. And my daughter was stuck at the top for a good 30 seconds, yelling that she wanted to get off as the guy loaded kids into other cars. I know he heard her so I just patiently waited for him to bring the wheel all the way around and let her off—she clearly didn’t want to ride it.
To my dismay, the guy got every car loaded up and then just let ‘er rip. My daughter started crying and making eye contact with me to get her off. I said something to the guy operating it, who had way more tattoos and piercings than teeth, and he said, “Once the ride is going, I have to let it go.”
I said, “Really? Couldn’t you just stop it once and let her off? She’s terrified.”
He shrugged his shoulders and indicated no.
I made eye contact one more time, and my daughter was getting really upset. So I went over to this dude and yelled, “Hey! Carnie! Get her off the goddamn ride NOW!”
I’m a pretty calm person these days, and I have rarely raised my voice in the past 14-plus years of sobriety, and I certainly avoid screaming insulting things at people as much as humanly possible. But back in the day… I could dial up a pretty good fastball. And once I had a bunch of drugs and alcohol in me? Forget it, I was willing to fight anybody.
To this guy’s credit, once I yelled at him, he stopped the ride and let her off. But as she was slowly getting off, I could hear him on a walkie-talkie saying he had a problem, that a guy at the Ferris wheel was getting violent with him. “Send over some of the guys,” he said.
At that point, I came to the realization that these guys were going to easily rough me up and throw me in the dumpster where they lined up to smoke Pall Malls after hours. So I wanted to get the hell out of there. But my daughter was scuffling. She was still a little woozy and teary-eyed from the experience, so she was not moving fast. I watched as a pack of five or six other carnies—sorry, carnival specialists—rolled up to the Ferris wheel and put their heads together with the guy I had yelled at.
He spoke for a few seconds and I watched as their heads slowly turned to find where I was at. These dudes were scrappers, too, so they didn’t look like they wanted to have a calm conversation. I managed to contort myself a bit so I was closer to my daughter’s level and we sort of sank into the crowd. I saw the guy craning his neck and gawking to see if he could spot me. But his carnie buddies all went wandering out into the pack of dozens of other parents, and they seemed lost.
I had managed to evade the carnie crew. I found my wife and told her my daughter had just had a terrible experience, and it was hot, and maybe we should head for the car. I was sweating so bad that I thought I might puke—I usually had a toxic mix of pills and booze in me, and now I was about to get the ever-loving s**t kicked out of me by a carnie mob. I was a mess, and my wife could sense it.
We got out of there, and to this day my wife has no idea about my little skirmish. It was mayhem that night, though, which is a good reminder of how difficult it must have been to be a partner to me during this time. My life was chaotic every single time I stepped out of the house, and I guess most people just got used to it.
The moral of this story is… don’t drink and do drugs like I used to, for one. Also, don’t mix those things and go to a town carnival with your kids. And last but not least, definitely don’t get in the face of a carnival worker and call him a carnie.
This newsletter is a place of joy and laughter about the deadly serious business of sobriety. So, as I will often do, let me close with a joke:
A DRUNK WALKS INTO A TRAVEL AGENCY, goes up to the desk, and says, "I'd like a round-trip ticket, please."
"Where to?" the agent asks.
The drunk explains: "Why, back here, naturally."
(Credit: AA Grapevine, January 2004, by Alexander B.)
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