What's the worst prize you've ever won at an amusement park/carnival?

christo

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My parents are doing some heavy house cleaning and I stopped by after work to help cart stuff to the curb for garbage day. My dad cleaned out his office bigtime, went through these old stacks of LP's he's had since the sixties, and he pulled one out and shoved it in my face. "Remember this?" he said.

I tried to avert my eyes, but too late. I was transported back in time, back, back, back to when I was like 9 years old. I was at Kennywood Park with my folks (Kennywood is this great amusement park in Pittsburgh). My parents had a rule--no games until we were ready to leave. They were of course afraid that I would get lucky and win some huge motherfucking bear or something and they would have to cart it around all day. I did that very thing at a school picnic in high school--got lucky, won a huge motherfucking bear, and had to cart it around all day. Pain in the ass.

Anyway, I did the fish pond and the squirt guns and the ball toss, and I came to a game where you tossed softballs into a wooden box divided up like a tic-tac-toe board. Get three in a row down the middle and you win a BIG prize. So I throw one ball, two balls, three balls...and I win! Three in a row down the middle! I can still remember the excitement I felt, the butterflies. I won!

The bored teenage kid reached under the counter and handed me my prize. I thought it was be a whistle, or a magnifying glass, or toy truck, something useful. No. He handed me an album. I didn't quite understand. I took the album and looked at it. I recognized the guy on the cover. But he was on TV, he didn't make records. I handed it to my dad, confused...

What did I win?

The debut album of David Soul. AKA, the blond guy from Starsky and Hutch. Forget which one he was.

To this day I want to jump on a chair and scream, "What the fuck? I mean, what the fucking fuck?!" What kind of bullshit is this? What kind of monster exposes a 9-year-old kid to a song like "Don't Give Up On Us, Baby?" I showed the album to my dad and he started laughing like a maniac, I mean, he could barely breathe, and my dad is not a man who gives in easily to mirth. He thought it was the funniest thing in the world.

I tried to listen to it when I got home, but I couldn't bear it. I put it back in the sleeve, shoved it in the back of my dad's record rack, and there it stayed, for about 20 years, until today. My dad got another good laugh out of it. I didn't. I still want my goddam magnifying glass.
 
It is funny how we hold on to things

from our childhood. A simple toy or magnify glass can bring us back to a certain time. Thank you for sharing. Something that I won at a carnival when I was 17 at the Shea Stadium Fair was these one little stuff animal. I flirted with the guy and he gave me a yellow banana with a smiling face. Hmmm I wonder now. I did not masturbate until years later. Perhaps I could of put good used to that banana instead of displaying it in my first car.

Sorry to turn sexual on you. Ok back to normalicy. Thank you for the childhood thought.

Peace,
Tulip
 
hmmmmm

Think I spent $20 bucks once and got a spider ring.
 
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