Kids These Days:

It was a simple idea presented here last week, one meant to start a discussion about how to help make the Orange County Fair more family friendly. The reactions, however, exposed a tremendous amount of bitterness.

To recap, the fair has been at its location for 50 years. During that time, attendance has risen dramatically, with the last 10 years showing an increase of 40%.

In an effort to accommodate the growing throng, fair officials have expanded operating hours so much that the 2010 fair will last a month.

The suggestion exposed some deep, lingering bitterness over former Irvine Mayor Larry Agran and the fact that there is not and will never be a big, smelly, noisy international airport where the Great Park is. More on that later.

The fun started with a post by “ttulac” who wrote “Fail.” I was thinking that perhaps ttulac is a teacher and mistakenly posted a student’s grade as a comment on the column. If that’s true, I feel better about sparing some kid the agony of learning about that grade for a few days.

Ttulac’s cryptic message was followed immediately by one from “gericault.” His reply was civil, and he offered a few reasons why he thought my idea was bad, including a comment about how the warm weather during the summer at the Great Park was not as favorable as the weather in Costa Mesa.

Then the exchanges deteriorated. Chris McEvoy wrote, “How about we give Steve Smith to Irvine and keep the fair in Costa Mesa,” not ending his question with a question mark, but with a period.

Rob Dickson wrote, “Are you one of the crowd that drove Cirque du Soleil away with unreasonable noise complaints?” The loss of Cirque du Soleil to the city of Irvine would come up again.

Then the dam broke. On the day the column was posted, “Keep the fair” wrote, “I can not believe what I am reading — this is about as insane as the ‘Great Park’ — Orange County voted a number of times to turn the ‘Great Park’ into what it should be, a[n] AIRPORT, but Irvine would have nothing to do with that and kept fighting even after Orange County made there [sic] decision.”

So after just a few posts, it became clear that a clutch of readers may not have minded a discussion about relocating the fair for the greater good of the county, they just didn’t want it moved to the so-called Great Park. As amazing as it may read, these people are still bitter about losing the fight to build an airport on the grounds.

This gang includes: Chuck Cassity, who wrote, “First Irvine stole our airport…”; and “White1932,” who wrote, “Steve, I think Larry Agran has done enough damage to Costa Mesa.”

White1932 also wrote, “I’ve heard that [Jeff] Teller is not happy about the fair ruining his summer business, and Larry Agran would like to move the fair to his Great Park (like he moved Cirque du Soleil).”

I can handle the insults, and I can even handle the severe disagreements with the idea to move the fair.

What concerns me most is the failure of some readers to learn one of the most important life lessons parents try to teach their kids: Stop blaming others when events do not work out the way we want.

Blaming Agran for Costa Mesa’s loss of Cirque du Soleil or for the lack of an airport at El Toro is typical.

Move the fair or don’t. But don’t blame others for whatever goes wrong with your plans in life.

STEVE SMITH is a Costa Mesa resident and a freelance writer. Send story ideas to dailypilot@latimes.com .