W hat artist hasn’t had nightmares about showing up a day late for a fair, or completely forgetting to bring their work, or having all their money stolen, or realizing they don’t have pants on.

Or how about this one: At an outdoor crafts fair, your booth is half a block away from the main show and you have to watch helplessly as everyone else makes money and has fun.

That’s exactly what happened to five artists at a show recently. Each of us makes crafts for children and were selected as guinea pigs for an experiment that many artists would have told you was a bad idea: adding a side street to an established one-street show.

In fact, most of us did tell the promoter it was a bad idea when they called us about it. But, it was either that, or not get in
at all.

It was to be called the Kidzone — a side street with a few select craftspeople, entertainment, music, rides, the works. All for kids. And it might have worked. Only none of it showed up … except the five of us.

What’s more, the fire marshal required us to be 50 feet from the main intersection where the rest of the show was, so his fire trucks could have room to make a wide turn in an emergency. Fifty feet is five booth lengths away, but it might as well have been five miles. We were completely, totally isolated from the rest of the event.

By 11a.m., thousands of people were streaming by on the main street. Some, who noticed, would slow down and stare quizzically as they passed in the throng, wondering about the five of us in our pathetic little cluster down the side street, as if we’d been sent to our room.

For two hours, we stood there in disbelief and growing frustration as the promoters scrambled to rectify the mess. They were desperate enough to go looking for the local street clown who makes balloon animals … to come and do what?

The whole thing was so ridiculous that it was actually funny. Someone suggested we send up distress flares. Or reroute all foot traffic using orange highway cones. But the bottom line was, we were losing money and patience, and nothing was getting fixed.

I was the one local in the group and having been in this show since the beginning, felt protective and responsible for our little contingent. I began to realize something very important and usually overlooked — promoters have nightmares, too. And theirs are every bit as scary as ours.

What if the port-a-potty cleaners don’t show up? Or someone hits a fire hydrant. Or the fire marshal shuts down the event for an overlooked violation. Or, God forbid, the kids’ entertainers don’t show up.

These are actually terrific opportunities for us all to walk a mile in each other’s moccasins and try being part of the solution instead of adding to the problem by blaming and accusing.

You know you’re working with a good promoter when they take our nightmares as seriously as their own. We should return the favor. Perhaps they shouldn’t have tried the side-street idea at all. Who knows? But the fact was, it wasn’t working here and the only real choice was to pitch in and work out a solution.

Within an hour, we had found spaces to put all five of us on the main street. It wasn’t even a squeeze. And within a few more hours, we had all helped each other move, which, of course, at a crowded fair is easier said than done, though it did provide some comic relief.

Instead of dismantling our canopies, we lifted them up by the legs and paraded them through the crowds, honking and tooting. We got a lot of attention and it was good for morale.

Most of us did lose the better part of a day’s sales and we’re hoping that the promoter will see the benefit of waiving our commission for the day, if not the show. But whatever the outcome, we worked together, artist and promoter, and no one found it necessary to get nasty.

It was stressful for all of us but it worked out, and hopefully, now that we understand each other’s nightmares a little better, we can get back to dreaming of better things.