Going to the Ex was always my favourite part of summer. It was the last "big" event I got to do before school started again in September. My Grandma and I would work for Nadrofsky Lumber all summer long, making pallets so that I could save some spending money to spend at the Ex. She and my Grandpa Orr, Great Uncle Tony and Aunt Wanda would gather my cousin Amy and I up and head down to Toronto. They would give us some of our money (never all of it as we were not much for budgets) and let us loose. We were always instructed to meet back at the flag pole at a certain time where we would "check-in" and always get some more money!
I have so many fond memories of Amy and I enjoying the midway and playing games. We'd always take some time to do a little shopping and play some games. We'd stick our heads in a photo booth for a few fun shots too!
I have two memories that stick out among the many.
The first was the year we went down and won the big stuffed animals. We had just started out in the morning, after leaving the parents and grandparents behind, we were dressed in our coolest clothes, bicycle shorts and hyper-coloured T-shirts, and decided to play games. I won a jumbo teddy bear playing a game where you toss a t-ball into an area of hundreds of cups, aiming for the coloured one in the centre. Immediately after that, Amy went to the game where you throw the baseball into the basket and low and behold, she won a jumbo parrot! The only bad part was that we had to carry these stuffed animals around for a few hours until we met back up at the flag pole....boy were we glad to get them into the van!
The other memory was while we were riding, "Music Makes the World Go Round". We were enjoying the ride when all of a sudden the guys that were running the ride started talking to us over the mic. They wanted to know how old we were, so, Amy looked at me and said, "Well Tam, how old do we want to be?" I think we told them 16 which was off by a few years as we were only about 13 or 14. As the ride came to an end they didn't let us off so we ended up riding it a few times in a row! After about the third time, a guy jumped into the seat with us and said to us, "hi girls, my name is Barry. Just think of strawberry and you'll never forget me." I guess he was right considering 20 years later I still remember. They finally let us off the ride and a couple of them joined us to go on a few more rides. I loved it as Amy was always scared of heights so I could finally go on some rides that she wouldn't go on. A while later we reallized that we were late for our check-in at the flag pole. We told the guys good-bye and ran to the cable cars. Half way across the park the cable cars stopped and we were hanging up there in mid-air. Just as we were about to hyperventilate they started up again and carried us across. We ran to the flag pole where there were some very cross adults waiting for us. We blamed it all on the cable cars (as we swore each other to secrecy about the boys) and finally were allowed to head off again. Many years later, Amy was my maid of honour and the secret of the boys was a secret no longer as she spilled the beans during her speech!
I'll never forget the fun I had with Amy and the memories that we shared while enjoying the Ex!
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