LJ Idol Week 0 topic: The upside down

Equipped with just one first name, I entered this world one wet day in November of 1982. My mother had visited the fairground two days before but did not go on any rides of course. She just loved the scenery. So do I until now. I visited the same fairground that takes place every year in November as a child and still as a teenager.

When I was younger, I was terribly afraid of saltos. That is probably why I waited upright in my mother’s womb to be born instead of turning myself upside down for the exit.

One day I went on a looping ride and cried the whole time I was in it. After that, however, I had lost any fear of viewing the world upside down. I even got to collect enough courage to go on a five-looping rollercoaster ride. I only noticed what I had done when I sat in that wagon going up way too high to take up speed for the first looping. Like many others, I shouted and closed my eyes when the coaster went down and up into the first looping. During the second one, I opened my eyes and really saw the world turned around.

And it was not just the little victory over my fear. It was the scent of popcorn and hot cheese. It was winning plushies at the camel race (where you must roll a wooden ball towards holes with numbers from 1 to 3 and your camel will go the number of steps the ball falls through). It was a place of hope and gifts, since my birthday was near and I knew that even my great-grandmother had visited the fairground years before my mother walked on it with a girl sitting upright in her womb.

All the lights, the scents and feelings have, no matter if upside down or upright, been a part of me.