The Time I Got the Most Out of the County Fair

Last night I dreamt that a friend, Kendra, from middle school—now grown up—and I were at the county fair. It was the afternoon of the last day the fair would be in town, so we rushed from booth to booth and from exhibit to exhibit making sure we had seen everything we wanted to see and bought everything we wanted to buy. Kendra was meeting her boyfriend later to do the exact same thing with him, but at this time she wanted do go through with another woman and look at the girl stuff.

For example, we both stopped for a very long time in the clothing section of the fair. Some of the clothes were so pretty and cheap and unusual. I had to keep reminding myself that I have no money.

Finally, in one of the more established stores, we ran into my mother and brother. My brother had bought presents for everyone in the family, which was very sweet, except that the presents were dragon designs made out of poor-quality gummy candy. He was trying to be nice, so I thanked him profusely.

Then we came upon a hat section. I've always liked the idea of hats and scarves even though my head is large and round and wearing things on my head just makes me look like a stumpy lollipop. Some Muslim women were there looking at these large gypsy headscarves that some of the carny women wore. The scarves were so pretty, with different layers of cloth textures. I wanted one.

I spent a while going through all of the possible color schemes—Kendra getting bored all the time—when I finally found one with blue calico and gold-patterned green. I tried it on and looked in the mirror. I looked horrible! A swollen, zitty face surrounded by a wimple that made my head look like one of the Pyramids. I took off the headscarf and found black specks in my hair.

"They're too small to be bedbugs. They're too small to be bedbugs," I told myself.

Then I heard my mother talking to Kendra about me: "I'm not sure I want her running around with stewed hair," my mom said. By which she meant she didn't want me to look Muslim and confuse people. And then I woke up.