I keep putting off taking Devin to the carnival by my house because I am a grown-up. Carnivals are fun, don't get me wrong, but most of the time age just kind of ruins some things for me. I remember from my childhood that going to carnivals and amusement parks was a really special thing. Growing up with not a lot of money and not being able to take week-long treks to Ocean City or various other destinations along the Eastern seaboard, they became my vacations. They were close to home, yet not so much of a constant presence that they became boring or routine. And I got to have giant machines spin me around in ways I could never accomplish in my backyard, allowing me to reach higher levels of dizziness; a feeling I have always loved.

But then experience came along with age and, as with so many other childhood activities I once partook in with reckless abandon, ruined carnivals for me. I don't remember when exactly the news started talking so much more about amusement park and carnival ride injuries and deaths. I don't know that they ever talked less about it. Perhaps I just reached an age when one day the news became a lot more interesting to watch than MTV. I don't know for sure. I went from craving the spinning of the Round Up and the thrashing of the Scrambler one day, to thanking my mother for being too broke to take me to ride on those possible death traps.

Injuries and deaths caused by thrill rides are few and far between, but have you ever read about them? They're such gruesome, horrible injuries to sustain that one would certainly be praying for death in the event that they found themselves thrown from a ride, only to be hit in the back of the head by the very seat they were just occupying. Scary shit there, man. Having your head crushed by the ride's motor; having a cable snap and whip around to cut off your feet; the ride you're in that's moving at around 100 miles per hour tips over... And I'm supposed to pay money for this? I realize that my chances of having any of those things happen are slim, but I'm just not sure if I'm willing to place money on whether or not there will be a malfunction of the hydraulics keeping me in my seat.

Uncertainty is a shitty thing for me to wrap my head around. I much prefer the comfort and security that certainties provide. I've been swaddled up in certainty's comfort for so long that if a strong breeze so much as ruffles a neatly tucked corner, it's freak out time. I've been thinking a lot about it lately, and my consensus is that it's getting to be a little hot for blankets. My usual strategy when this happens is to learn to be comfortable being a little warmer than I'd like by removing the blanket, but keeping the sheets. In keeping with this analogy I have going, I want to be able to sleep without my blankie. But I'm scared.

And I'm so good at imagining myself stripping my bed of its cold weather bedding, so very good. In my mind things always turn out so wonderfully, but then I hear the house settling at night and it scares me, so I scramble down to the end of my bed to pull up the blanket it turns out I didn't really have the balls to pack away. It's the fear, I suppose. What if I get to the point where I'm able to store my blankets in the closet and I end up liking sleeping without them more than with? At that point I'd have to come to the conclusion that I've been thinking about uncertainties in the wrong light ever since I can remember, and as neurotic as those thoughts are, no one likes to be confronted with the fact that they were wrong. I'd be laying there naked and ill-equipped. An unarmed soldier trying to fight the invisible things that go bump in the night.

Sometimes the mind can fixate on the most negative example of something gone wrong that it is unable to see past it, even if the something that went wrong didn't happen to them. A fine example of this would be not eating at a certain restaurant because you "know a dude who got food poisoning there and it wasn't pretty". Perhaps the line cook who forgot to wash their hands after taking a shit has been fired. Another example would be reading in a fashion magazine that certain colors are not flattering for people with specific skin tones and then purposely avoiding any shade of the offensive colors. In reality, there are so many varying shades of any given color that finding one that doesn't work for you would be damn near impossible.

But as they often say, "the only certainties in life are death and taxes", and I'm beginning to question my thoughts about the comfort levels contained within certainties. According to that statement, I am missing out on a shitload of life, as that statement implies that everything but death and taxes is uncertain. It's an uncomfortable thought to think, again with the no one likes to be wrong rhetoric. I've been depriving myself of a lot of possible joy; all because there is also a fairly equal possibility that I might have to feel some discomfort. Because it's kind of true, the death and taxes thing. So far nothing in the world has gone according to plan, none of the great things that have been accomplished throughout history would have been accomplished if it weren't for someone willing to take a chance. I probably wouldn't have the computer I'm typing on if it weren't for someone willing to make mistakes more costly than a failed community college class. And I would probably die without a computer.

That was a really long way to say that I basically need to change my entire way of thinking. I need to just ride the ride and see what happens. All of that said, I'm still going to have to think about the carnival thing. I'm pretty low on funds and it's been raining a lot in the past week, which probably increases the likelihood of having the Zipper tip over, electrocuting us with pulsating lights and crushing us with steel. I'm a grown ass woman and if age and experience have taught me anything, they have taught me that there are much cheaper and somewhat safer methods of achieving a nice case of the spins than going to the carnival.