What You Can Learn by Sitting and Watching

What You Can Learn by Sitting and Watching

The Iowa District of Optimist International sponsors a booth at the Iowa State Fair.  Each year Optimists from around the state staff the location in the Varied Industries Building that has been ours for 10 years as a marketing tool and a means to attract more people to the cause and our organization.  This past Saturday I was manning the booth by choice from 1:00-5:00 by choice and from 5:00-9:00 out of necessity.  Eight hours is a long time to watch thousands of people pass by and talk to dozens of them.  But it also was a classroom that would make a sociologist salivate with anticipation for an opportunity to study.

Some notes then from the Iowa State Fair classroom:

1.  There are generally three types of people at the fair.  Those with anticipation written all over the race, those who don’t give a rip and those who are bored and wished they were in some other place.

2.  There are the inquisitive types “what’s this all about” is a common saying while others are oblivious like the young woman who walked into one of the steel support beams in the building while texting on her phone.

3. There are the leisurely fairgoers who meander from one exhibit to another taking it all in while others never heard of the word meander and travel at break neck speed.  My sense is the first group has less stress in their lives than the second which could be a sign to us all that the occasional meander is healthy.

4.  There is the occasional friend or acquaintance who stops by to say hi which helps break up the day.  It also confirms the notion that “you never know who you will run into at the fair. And finally,,,

5.  Children are great teachers. The Optimists hand out Dum Dum suckers to young people and the not so young as a means to get people to stop by and hopefully listen to those of us staffing the booth give the sales pitch.  The children would come up to the booth having spied the suckers from across the way with eyes as big as apples.  “Can I have one?”

“Yes, just one and you get to pick which one,” if often the reply.  This usually results is some serious calculation over whether the “mystery” flavor or one of the traditional ones is selected. 

Then there are a lot of the big kids (adults) who swoop in don’t make eye contact, grab a sucker and continue on their way, believing somehow that that have gone unnoticed,

The children, though, are different because whether they can barely see over the table to get to the Dum, Dums or whether they are in middle school, they end their stop at the Optimist booth with two words, ‘Thank you.”

Maybe adults could learn something from them.  See you Thursday.