For many years, I thought that people who claimed to have been abducted by aliens were either desperate attention-seekers or just nuts. Why else would they say that they were spirited out of their beds and through walls and roofs and into a flying saucer? I changed my mind after attending an abductee conference. Maybe they were lunatics, but that doesn't mean they weren't onto something.

Many terrible things begin with B: bears, blindness, boilers, bats, bridges, and brain tumors. But no one brings any of those things to a party to up the fun quotient. When I look at a balloon, all I see is an imminent explosion. Where's the fun in that?

A huge crowd of moronic-looking people hell-bent on "amusement"; brutish carnies running rigged games in which people try to win hideous stuffed animals; dangerous rides where you get flung around to the point of nauseousness, manned by drunken half-wits; electrical cables underfoot; carcinogenic food; and much, much more.

Copyright 2011 by Roz Chast. Reprinted by permission of Bloomsbury.