There was a festival at the library in mid-May.
We were unprepared, to say the least. It was the first year, and it had been forever since I’d tabled anywhere, so my thought process was something like: “Surely we won’t need much swag at all. Or a tent. Or a cooler full of water. It’s only May and there’s at least one tree – we won’t get too hot.”
I was wrong about literally everything except the tree. There was a tree, and we were kind of under it, but I did have to leave and buy water and a tent and our candy melted and we ran out of stuff. Lesson learned, right?
Not really!
A tent! Candy that wouldn’t melt! A cooler full of water! More stickers and bracelets! Pins and scratch art bookmarks! We’re not a vendor, so no one’s going to stop at our table!
We spent the last 1.5-2 hours of Pride just sitting at our table with our business cards, essentially. I spent the week prior procrastinating, until the night before, when I sat down and alternated (for hours! I didn’t sleep!) between gluing backs to epoxyed pins (because I wasn’t going to spend $100 on a button maker), throwing rainbows all over our graphics, and shoving sheet after sheet of holographic sticker paper through my Cricut.
To be fair to myself and my expectations, though: this was a Pride festival in West Virginia. Did I think there’d be a thousand people there? I very much did not*.
I didn’t think there’d be a Ghostbuster either. Truly a day full of surprises. Sweaty, sweaty surprises.
* I actually expected more community anger, because West Virginia is, well. Y’know. Even the fourth biggest city in the state (population 12)(lol) is a cesspool of extra-conservative bullshit ringed by the far right and egged on by Mike Azinger**. As far as I’ve heard, though, there was only one creep hovering around the perimeter, filming everyone and hiding behind a truck when anyone noticed him. Like: buddy, you are the only weird person here. Fuck all the way off.
** I have an opinion of Mike Azinger and I’d like to share it but I had to make my twitter private because I received a vague “anonymous” (I know who it was from) “threat” (they said they were going to tattle to my father, because we’re both 12, I guess, and he would, I don’t know, ground me?) for calling him stupid. Because he is:
I’m not going to say anything else, though. I don’t want to get sent to the principal’s office.