When Rachel recently told me she'd never been to the State Fair of Texas, deciding how to spend date night this month was easy. We went yesterday evening, which left us just enough time to experience the highlights of the fair experience: over-the-top Texas expositions, animal races, the rides and games of the midway, the car show, and fried food galore. We had a good time, not always because of something we planned.
I'll skip to my favorite part. About 15 minutes before we started to make our way to the train stop, I made one final attempt to win a prize for Rachel at a ring toss booth. For those of you who don't know what I'm talking about, the object of the game is to throw a small, plastic ring around the neck of one of about one hundred glass bottles. To give you an idea of how unlikely one is to be successful at winning, they usually give you about thirty throws. It looks about like this:
The guy working the booth is what made the evening. Frustrated by seeing so many lose at this game throughout the day, he did his best to help increase my chances of winning. Every time I would throw a ring, he would replace it with a handful more. By the end, I must have gone through close to a hundred.
The poor guy was visibly disappointed that his good will didn't result in my winning. In some ways, its just as well. I mean, what would we do with a giant, plush bear anyway? Yet what this guy doesn't know is that his kindness and goodwill made our evening more memorable that any prize could.
To further clarify, Andy was several times exceptionally close to winning, which is what inspired the guy to help him out so much. By the time he'd thrown about 40 buckets of rings, the worker declared it all BS, and shook Andy's hand on the way out.
ReplyDeleteAlso, apparently, my time postings are messed up. I totally won, I swear. It's 11:12pm right now.
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