When I think of family fun, three words come to mind: Chinese water torture.

But since none of that is on hand, I guess the Kern County Fair will suffice.

Yes, that’s right, the only place where you can blow an entire paycheck on failed attempts to win your girlfriend a stuffed toy gorilla holding a heart that says “I love Pookie” on it and purchase a funnel cake that takes a detour of the human stomach and heads straight for the heart, where it can dance a jig of glee with its friend, El Se§or Fairground Churro.

Ah, you can smell it in the air when you walk around the fairgrounds: A mixture of hay, popcorn, cotton candy and hoards of people who have been fermenting in the sun all day waiting to risk their lives on a rickety metal contraption that has probably been running since Franklin D. Roosevelt was in office.

Regardless of what people who put on the fair tell you, it’s not a day of fun with the Brady Bunch. I remember being 5 years old, and my father nearly having a stroke in an attempt to win my sister and me a stuffed Spuds McKenzie dog.

“Son of a motherloving duck!” he kept saying, only in Spanish, so that the people who passed by would still think he was a nut, but not be offended by any language he used. We never got the damn dog.

I don’t like rides.

I don’t like games.

And I especially don’t like children. In fact, I tend to hate most people in general.

So it’s no secret that I’m not thrilled by the opportunity to spend the afternoon with the people who gave me life but also gave me the compulsive disorder of washing my hands 68 times a day.

And seeing all of the other parents at the fair, smiling even though their little angel just pitched a fit because he couldn’t have an invisible dog on a leash and proceeded to wipe his nose on one of the display quilts at the arts and crafts gallery, would merely confirm the hell we were all being forced to live.

I suppose the fair isn’t all that bad, but its potential is wasted on me.

In the past, it was possible to place all your faith in an overgrown rubber band, a.k.a. bungee jump, while being videotaped.

This was so your family would have Exhibit A for the trial resulting from your untimely death. Call me kooky, but that’s re-freakin’-diculous.

Whatever happened to the days when old-fashioned family quality time was spent at funerals?

There’s usually a lot of food afterward and everyone goes from person to person talking about how much they dislike the person they just talked to, like musical chairs for the hateful. That sounds good, sign me up for that.

If I had to choose between family fun at the fair and sticking bamboo shoots up my nails, I’d go with the least bloody act: the bamboo shoots.

Sure, on the surface the fair looks good with the fried food, fast rides and tons of fun with your family, but it all ends up in the same place: the bathroom.

And if there’s one piece of advice I can offer that my father offered me, it’s this: “Never trust a carny. Those bastards will get you each time.”

Only I can’t say it in Spanish.