The Wooden Goose Almost Got Me

I went to a craft fair with the kind of confidence only carried by a woman who has lied to herself in the parking lot.

I was not buying anything.

That was the official statement. Clean. Firm. Government-grade nonsense.

I had cash in my wallet, a tote bag folded inside another tote bag, and the reckless optimism of someone who believes she can enter a building full of handmade soap, crocheted frogs, and old men selling birdhouses without becoming financially compromised.

Craft fairs are dangerous because they look harmless. That’s how they get you.

Nobody warns you properly. They say things like, “Oh, it’ll be cute,” and “We’ll just walk around,” as if “just walking around” has not led to half the poor decisions in American history.

The second I walked in, I knew I had made a mistake.

There were tables everywhere. Quilts hanging from metal racks. Candles named after feelings nobody asked a candle to have. A woman selling earrings made from recycled spoons. A basket of tiny knitted hats for dogs who have never once asked to participate in seasonal whimsy.

The air smelled like cinnamon, sawdust, and somebody’s aunt’s basement.

I was immediately vulnerable.

I started with the soaps because soap feels safe and useful. Soap does not make you wonder if you are the kind of woman who owns a ceramic mushroom family.

Except craft fair soap is not regular soap. It’s arranged like dessert. It has swirls. It has dried flower bits. It has names like Forest Walk and Honey Milk Hug and Lavender Porch Nap.

I picked one up and thought, this would be nice in the bathroom.

Then I remembered I already own soap. Several soaps. Enough soap to cleanse a small dirty village. So I put it back like a person who follows a strict budget and moved on.

Then came the wooden signs.

Live Laugh Love has been through enough. We all have. But craft fair sign culture has evolved into something slightly different but also the same. There were signs about coffee. Signs about dogs. Signs about wine. Signs warning guests that the house is loud, unkept, and full of love, which is usually code for “there is one chair nobody is allowed to sit in because it contains this pile of laundry.”

I passed a sign that said Welcome-ish and hated that I laughed.

That’s how they weaken you.

Then I saw the goose.

It was on a corner table between a stack of hand-painted coasters and a display of wooden yard gnomes with expressions that suggested they had seen naked bodies. The goose was about the size of a child’s backpack. White body. Orange beak. Black dot eyes. A little carved wing. Sanded smooth, painted with the kind of care usually reserved for restoring old churches or covering up drywall damage before guests arrive.

It had a bow around its neck.

A bow.

I stopped walking.

My friends kept going, which was rude because clearly I was having a moment.

I looked at the goose. The goose looked at nothing because it was wood, which somehow made it seem more powerful.

I picked it up.

This was my first real mistake.

A craft fair object gains power the second it enters your hands. On the table, it is merchandise. In your hands, it becomes a potential purchase. It starts introducing itself to the corners of your house, suggesting that maybe your home lacks character because you have failed to purchase decorative poultry from a man in a checkered vest.

I turned it over. It was solid. Heavy enough to feel expensive, light enough to feel reasonable, which is the most dangerous weight category.

The price tag said $38.

Now, $38 is not nothing. It is also not enough to make you leave with dignity. It sits in that cursed middle zone where your brain starts doing math like a corrupt accountant.

That’s less than dinner.

That’s more than lunch.

That’s basically free if you divide it by how many times you’ll look at it.

That last one is how they get you into furniture, cults, and premium skincare.

I stood there imagining the goose by my front door. Maybe with a ribbon I could change seasonally. A tiny plaid scarf in winter. A floral bow in spring. A little patriotic accessory for summer, if I decided to become someone who decorates for months instead of holidays.

I hated who I was becoming.

But there is something about a craft fair that makes rustic nonsense feel like a calling. In a regular store, I would walk past a wooden goose with the scowl of a mother denying her child that sugary cereal. At a craft fair, surrounded by hand-poured wax melts and crocheted emotional support vegetables, I became a woman considering the long-term value of a hallway bird.

The man behind the table saw me holding it and smiled in the calm way of someone who knew the goose had already done most of the work.

He didn’t have to sell me. That was the horror. Salesmanship would have helped me resist. If he had started telling me about the craftsmanship or the hours it took or the special wood from a tree struck by lightning, I could have snapped back into myself. I could have said something polite and escaped.

Instead, he just let me stand there with my new problem.

A quiet vendor is lethal.

I put the goose down.

Then I picked it back up.

This is the part nobody talks about. The second pickup is basically a proposal.

At that point, I was no longer shopping. I was negotiating with the woman I might become. A woman who says, “I found it at this little craft fair,” while guests pretend not to be unsettled by the foyer fowl.

I walked away to “think about it,” which is shopper language for “please let me make this worse with distance.”

I made it past the jam table, the resin bookmarks, and a display of crocheted chickens before I turned around.

Crocheted chickens, by the way, are gateway poultry. Do not look twice.

The goose was still there.

Of course it was still there. Nobody else was circling it because nobody else had lost access to reason near the homemade fudge.

I stood in front of it again, pretending to inspect the coasters. This fooled no one. Not me. Not the vendor. Not the goose.

Then I had a vision of myself carrying it to the car.

A full-grown woman walking through a parking lot holding a wooden goose under one arm like I had just adopted it from a frontier pet rescue. Loading it into the passenger seat. Buckling it in because it had a face. Driving home while it stared forward with the blank confidence of something that now owned me.

That vision saved my life.

I left without the goose.

Barely.

I wish I could say I left because I am disciplined. I left because I became aware of consequences. There’s a difference. Discipline is drinking water and having a savings plan. Consequences are realizing you will have to explain the purchase of a decorative bird to yourself every single day.

And still, I have thought about that goose more than I care to admit.

That’s the real sickness.

Craft fairs sell alternate lives. A life where your home smells like clove oranges and where you label pantry jars. A life where you have a “mudroom,” which sounds fake but rich.

That wooden goose suggested I could become charming through purchase. Whimsical through poultry.

This is how adulthood gets weird. At some point, nobody is forcing you to be practical, so you have to parent yourself in public near a table of hand-carved ducks.

I survived the craft fair with fudge, a jar of peach jam, and no goose.

A victory, technically.

Though I do keep thinking about the entryway.

It does look a little empty.