{"id":1826,"date":"2018-03-25T02:06:33","date_gmt":"2018-03-25T02:06:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/eyeslikecarnivals.com\/?p=1826"},"modified":"2022-12-16T07:22:36","modified_gmt":"2022-12-16T07:22:36","slug":"1826","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eyeslikecarnivals.com\/?p=1826","title":{"rendered":"Child Specter seen Nightly at Traveling Carnival"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/a> \u201cI cannot think of any need in childhood as strong as the need for a father\u2019s protection.\u201d<\/strong> A single child specter follows me in carnivals amid unruly mobs of children.<\/p>\n Each show night I go to work my ride, I see kid legions plus one specter. She stands out on the midway as if in a spotlight and all the other kids are running around in dark stage light.<\/p>\n My daughter turned eight a few days ago. I came hitchhiking back from New York to Chicago to see her after my former mother-in-law e-mailed that my daughter was missing me deeply.<\/p>\n I\u2019m following traveling carnivals from coast to coast for a year, writing essays about America from the road. Last year I went to Canada, and the RV holidays in Canada<\/a> are a great way to explore all the best spots !!!<\/p>\n I\u2019d say this is a personal haunting, but I think it is another common experience shared by carnival workers with children of their own.<\/p>\n There is a running, bouncing dynamic in a child\u2019s happiness, which takes on an even higher pitch with mobs of children. Its an incalculable, elusive zeitgeist that darts between people in the moments of shared happiness.<\/p>\n It\u2019s inexplicable but something so deeply human. Blind people, having never seen a smile, smile. It\u2019s a contagion that carnival workers all say they feel.<\/p>\n Yet many carnival workers grew up in unhappy families and as adults don\u2019t see their own enough.<\/p>\n They grew up orphans, foster kids, juvenile delinquents or victims of abusive parents.<\/p>\n Seeing happy children every night must be an elixir at times for those once unhappy kids.<\/p>\n As for me, every running, laughing, bright-eyed child I see reminds me of my newly-minted eight-year-old daughter in far-away Chicago.<\/p>\n I feel simultaneous twinges.<\/p>\n Sometimes I look at kids about her age, I see her in them, and it hurts.<\/p>\n Other times, I think \u2013 I love one of these too.<\/p>\n
\nThe view from my carousel in Gage Park, Chicago.<\/em><\/p>\n
\nSigmund Freud<\/em><\/p>\n