Monday, September 8, 2008

The Fall Fair Baby Competition is Decadent and Depraved


(Editor's note: The following crossed our desk after being rejected by all of the major media outlets in the Orillia-Barrie-Midland Triangle. While we have yet to locate the author, billed only as Hunter S. Thompson's non-union Mexican equivalent, The Aging Hipster felt his story needed to be told.)

It was somewhere around the sheep display when the drugs began to take hold.
Damned good thing too -- all that hay was kicking the hell out my allergies.
The air was full of foul carnival music and barkers promising Def Leppard mirrors and giant combs to any man who could knock over three ill-weighted milk bottles with a softball. I elbowed my way through a sea of ugly hillbillies and their spawn getting their annual compulsive infusion of cotton candy and blue ribbon quilts. I was already late for the baby photo contest and I needed to be there for two reasons. First - it was an important story. Second - one of the mothers was paying me to heckle the other babies.
I arrived in the converted roller skating rink -- where these babies were to be judged -- and scanned the area for a bar. After five minutes I found a snack bar in the corner that sold domestic beer and boxed wine in plastic cups. I took one of both and thanked the Gods I'd brought a thermos full of mint julep for emergencies.
An odd mixture of yokels and soccer moms were gathered around a booth - the back lined with pictures of lily white babies. Most of the photos seemed professionally taken. Clearly against the rules, but it seems parents who hold their infants up to public scrutiny for their own personal gain have little regard for rules. The pictures were numbered and each had a corresponding Pringles can. The numbered can with the most money took home the prize. It seems my client's money could have been better spent but it was too late for that. I'd already spent the money on mint, bourbon, powdered sugar and a thermos.
Still, I had a job to do and I am nothing if not a professional. "Good Lord," I yelled. "The one on the left looks like he was chewed up by a rat terrier." Stifled laughter from all but one of the soccer moms and outright guffaws from the yokels.
"Does baby nineteen look drunk to you? What kind of monsters get their baby drunk ... AND TAKE PICTURES OF IT?" Even the well-heeled ladies weren't bothering to hide their laughter.
Some kid was dressed in a cowboy hat and bandana. "I'll wager he's never roped a calf in his life," I yelled in a thick southern drawl
"God damn buddy, you a funny guy." said some farmer, slapping me hard on the back, spilling half of my drink on my American flag Chuck Taylors.
"Fuck off BUDDY," I murmured. "I'm working here."
At this point the story becomes very slippery, with many loose ends and dark shadows. I continued taunting infant children to the amusement of the growing crowd until the pageant organizer arrived and pulled me aside. Forty-years-old, paunchy with glasses - he looked like an elementary school vice principal. He looked like something a six-year-old would draw if you asked him to illustrate the concept of humourless.
"What in the name of HOLY FUCK do you think you're doing?" he hissed. "Making fun of all these children who've yet to do you any harm?"
"Just doing my job, sir."
"Do you know what we are going to do to people like you when Stephen Harper gets his majority. Your kind will be locked in cages and forced to fight each other with machetes on the CBC. Now shut the fuck up."
I was shaken. This was a bit heavy to lay on a man with a head full of Benadryl and mint julep. I reacted the only way a reasonable man could.
"Baby 42 has the beady eyes of a paedophile." I yelled.
That's when the rousties came.

I woke up in a ditch on Hwy. 12. I was badly beaten and missing one thermos. I never found out which kid won but I'd bet it was that little bitch dressed up as a pumpkin.

No comments: