The lost art of walking in a square.

Last night Derek and I went to his grandmother's church for their annual Fall Festival. Now, when I heard the words "Fall Festival" I immediately thought of the Trick or Treat alternative that a lot of churches do for all the kiddies so they won't be out on the streets in the dark. I know, that's silly because it is only barely the end of September but I'm sorry...that's what I thought. We pull up and there are cars and kids everywhere you look. Keep in mind that this is Smalltown, Alabama. I'm a bad judge of people-numbering, but there was probably around 200 people at this thing. They had those giant blow up slides and moonwalks and something that looked like a whale (it was quite entertaining to watch the kids go in its mouth and then a few minutes later come sliding out of what I'm guessing could be considered the butt of the whale. Or "big fish" in biblical terms). They also had a clown making semi-vulgar looking balloon objects for the kids, cotton candy, hotdogs, popcorn and this self propelled twirly thing that the junk food filled youngsters could ride on. As we're sitting near this thing I'm thinking that maybe it isn't such a good idea to be in range of quasi-liquid projectiles...you get my drift.

Anyways, the creme de la creme of this shindig, as it is every year, was the Cake Walk. Ah yes. Walking in a square in the hopes that the number you land on will be the winning number. As we stand there watching the semi-zombie like participants slowly shuffling around, Laura is pointing out the family that comes every year and plays the game non stop the entire time. According to her, they make out with at least 10 cakes each year. What they do with them is a mystery. I mean, how many cakes can a person, or family even, eat before they go bad? After managing to fight my way into the game a few times, I have come up with a few guidelines for successful cake walking:

1.) Grab two children from one of the lines for the blow up slides. It doesn't matter if they're yours or not just make sure you hold on to them tight so they can't get away. Place one on the square in front of you and one behind so you have a sort of cake-walking sandwich thing going on. That way, you increase your odds of winning from 5% to 15% because what kid is going to remember that they won a cake when there are balloon animals/flowers/swords around.

2.) Put on your best mean face. There was one particular woman from the 10Cake family who was on the square in front of me. She tried to cheat once when they called out six and she was standing on the nine. As soon as she stepped off her number someone else jumped on. After the screams of "you're not six!  you're nine!!" stopped and she turned to go back to her spot, all she had to do was glare at the poor woman who took her place and that woman ran screaming. Okay, so she walked off, but it would have been funnier if she ran screaming. 

3.) Don't dare take your foot off your square until the square in front of you is empty. Otherwise you're in cakewalk limbo and can't claim either one of the squares as your own. I made this mistake and the kid behind me was practically riding piggyback so we're both mostly on square 11 and no one is on square 10. Striped shirt kid decides he wants to play and jumps on 10. Now there's too many people. Striped kid walks off for a second, so me being the sport that I am lets Piggyback Kid have 11 and I step back on 10. Unfortunately for me Striped kid was not finished and proceeds to yell at me that I'm on his square. By this time I've had enough fun and just leave the game to watch the mayhem.

4.) Make sure to leave a square empty. Otherwise no one will not move because they are afraid of giving up their spot. No amount of encouragement or accidental pushing will get them to move.

5.) It helps to know the facilitators of the game so that if you do win and the only cakes left are questionable, you can go in to the cake warehouse and upgrade to a better one.

6.) Do not be deceived by cake appearances. One that looks like a really good vanilla frosted lump of sugary goodness could actually be a tart lemony concoction of grossness.

 

Commit these guidelines to memory and you too can have hours of fun walking in a square!