The Memorial Day weekend provided more than enough material for my column. Where to start? Like all good detectives, I will start at the beginning: Friday night. I started the weekend off with a rowdy bang: I bought eyeglasses. After looking around JCPenney Optical for about 45 minutes and trying on about 130 pairs of glasses, I settled on one pair.
Parish was there to offer moral/don’t-take-all-day support. Then there were the two optical technicians, who proved to be very helpful and friendly. It was definitely a team effort. I have been wearing the same pair of spectacles for about 15 years. Before you call the eye police, let me explain, I only wear glasses to read at night and sometimes during the weekend. During the rest of the time, I wear contacts.
My recent trip to the eye doctor confirmed my Friday night purchase – my prescription was outdated and I was causing stress to my precious eyeballs. It was time to put my priorities in order, act like an adult (I will be 29 this week) and buy a new pair of specs. So I did. They should be in within the next few days and will no doubt come in handy during long road trips, days at the pool and reading road signs.
Saturday: Parish and I volunteered to collect food at Riverfest. I was looking forward to being in the midst of the action, greeting the 200,000 plus people who came by, accepting canned food, handing out free ice cream coupons and helping feed the hungry. Instead, we were sent to North Little Rock High School, had contact with about five people, got sunburned and sat in a parking lot for four hours. Simply put: the day did not go as I pictured.
Although, it was great to see the amount of food that people brought to the trolley ticket booth. We would carry the food from there to our little tent that we set up about 100 yards away. Despite knowing we were helping the less fortunate, I was bummed.
Our time was rewarded with free admission to the three-day-event, which was a nice perk after sweating in a vacant parking lot all morning. Riverfest was buzzing when we entered the gates around 4 p.m.
I was super hungry and focused all my attention on finding edible, yummy, festival food. I found it – corn dogs, funnel cakes, nachos, pizza, Krispy Kreme hamburgers, chocolate dipped bacon, gyros, sno cones and ice cream. I traded in a $20 bill for 20 food/drink tickets and found the corn dog cart and devoured the delicacy on a stick in a matter of minutes (it wasn’t pretty). Parish bought nachos and a funnel cake. I helped him eat the latter. We finally had our fill and decided to walk around and see what else the event had to offer.
It was unreasonably hot and even though our tickets were free, I didn’t want to stay around too long. But we did – because I had talked up the festival for over a month and it was Parish’s first time. Eventually, we looked at each other, sweat beads rolling down our faces and realized it was time to go. Everyone else looked the same – sunburned zombies looking for the next fried wonder. It was kind of scary.
The rest of the weekend was vastly different – we stayed inside our air-conditioned apartment, relaxed, swam at the pool and rejoiced in the fact that Riverfest happens only once a year.