His Dogness

Sparkle Girl loves the decorated vegetables, the cotton candy, the giant pumpkins, the giant slide, the carrousel. So we had no question about whether she was going to have fun as we headed out to the Dixie Classic Fair.

I had to stop by the bank for cash so we ended up approaching the fair from a different angle than we had last year. This led Sparkle Girl to worry that I might be toying with her and that we might not really be going to the fair.

“This isn’t the way we drove out last time. Are you sure this is the way to the fair?” she said more than once.

“Yes. I’m sure,” I said more than once.

Doobins we didn’t know about. When he is sweet, he is very sweet. But when he is a pill, he is a big pill. And, last year, he decided shortly after he arrived that he did not care for the fair. No, he did not. This was an opinion that he shared with us more than once.

The first sign that this year might be different – aside from the fact that he didn’t start crabbing right away – was his ready acceptance of Sparkle Girl’s offer to have some of her cotton candy.

Doobins can be quite stubborn in his unwillingness to try new foods, and our assurances that he will like something carry zero weight with him. So we didn’t even bother to try to sell him on the cotton candy by saying that Sparkle Girl was offering him virtually 100 percent sugar.

She made the offer. He tried it. He liked it. He asked for more.

My. My.

As we walked around taking in the fair, he pointed out a friend of his from preschool – something that he had never before done out and about in the world.

When we went to look at the decorated cakes and cupcakes – one of my favorite things to do at the fair – he zipped from display case to display case, calling to Sparkle Girl to come see this wonder and that – a cake shaped like a butterfly, a cake decorated to look like a table-cloth covered table set for dinner.

Before, whenever he has had the opportunity to ride a carrousel or other ride, he had declined, not always graciously. At Kiddieland, he said that he would like to ride the miniature train with Sparkle Girl. He smiled the whole time as it circled the track three times.

When it was time to eat more substantial fare, he split a hot dog with Sparkle Girl and returned again and again to our basket of fries for a ketchup-dipped fry. Whatever it is about the fair that makes people want to eat and eat had infected even Doobins.

The smile that had appeared on his mother’s face at the earlier wonders grew even grander.

Doobins wasn’t ready to try the Ferris Wheel so he and I found a spot to wait and watch nearby. Because of the line and the loading process, a noticeable amount of time passed before we saw them rise into the sky. He remained engaged in the bright world around him. And, when we moved on to the racing pigs, he waited patiently for the races to start.

Until that night, I would have told you that never would I buy a toy from one of those booths at a fair because you get so little for so much.

But when Doobins mentioned – not for the first time – that he really wanted a plastic trumpet, I gave the man $3 and was happy to do so. No doubt the day will come when the squeaky bleat of that will make me go mad but it was a joy to hear from the backseat as we drove home.

There in the backseat, he single-handedly squished a spider that crawled on him. Sparkle Girl was most impressed. When I announced that it was a red-letter day, indeed, for Mr. Doobins, Sparkle Girl suggested that we make it a yellow-letter day because she likes yellow better.

Back at the house, Doobins decided that the day had come to put on his pajamas all by himself for the first time. The pants went on without a hitch. With the top, he made a tactical error and tried to put his arms in through the neck hole. When we tired to offer suggestions, he said, “No! No!” and stopped off in a huff.

Thank goodness. He had been such a delight for so long that I was starting to worry.