A Rainy Day at the Circus

It was a rainy, gloomy spring day that didn’t seem good for much of anything. My wife turned to me and asked, “Would you like to do something different?”

“I’ll try anything once!” I replied eagerly.

And so, we went to see a circus.

This is hard to admit, but I had never attended a circus. During my first 40-some years, working on my family’s dairy farm kept me far too busy for such falderol. Then I spent more than two decades working as a newspaper writer and ad salesman, a job that consumed most of my bandwidth.

My wife and I have now reached the WC stage of life, as in, “Who cares? Let’s do this!”

We arrived at the venue and decided to embrace the full circus experience by partaking of some wholesome circus chow. This included a funnel cake, hot dogs and popcorn, all washed down by judicious amounts of soda.

As we searched for seats, my wife randomly chose to sit by two little girls. Gloria, aged six, and her sister, Evie, age seven, were attending the circus with their mom and aunts and uncles and various cousins. The two girls quickly came to regard us as circus-day grandparents.

Upon learning that this was my first time at a circus, Gloria decided to educate me. She had been to a circus once before, which meant that she had a lot more experience than me.

“They’re going to ride motorcycles inside of that,” Gloria said, pointing at a spherical cage. “It’ll be really loud, and they’ll even go upside down!”

“How can they do that without falling?” I asked.

“They’ll go really fast!” Gloria replied confidently.

The circus soon began. Dancers and jugglers displayed their talents in all three rings. Throughout the entirety of the circus, rock-type music was blasted at decibel levels that could pulverize kidney stones.

A string of six camels – the two-humped Bactrian kind – trotted into the ring closest to us. Following some indiscernible command from their trainer, they trotted around the ring several times before abruptly reversing direction. This was quite a treat for someone who had never seen a Bactrian camel before. I mean me, not Gloria.

After the camels left, a group of roadies, working with military precision, swiftly set up a large net. A quintet of acrobats climbed ropes and ladders to the trapeze swings that were suspended from the ceiling of the arena. The trapeze artists performed aerial stunts that appeared to violate several laws of physics.

“Look at that!” Evie exclaimed to my wife, pointing at the flying acrobats.

“How do they do that?” Gloria asked, wide-eyed. My wife explained that they practice every day. Gloria watched the acrobats closely, as if she were mentally calculating the drudgery-to-fun ratio of becoming a trapeze artist.

Soon after the trapeze act ended, a couple of large, shaggy beasts trotted into the center ring. And no, it wasn’t Sasquatch and Chewbacca.

It was a pair of bison that were being ridden by two young ladies who were dressed in tasteful circus attire. In other words, it looked like a pair of showgirls who were each riding 2,000 pounds of beef on the hoof.

“Ladies and gentlemen!” the ringmaster crowed over the loudspeakers, “Introducing the only buffalo act in all of America!”

I wanted to grab his mic and shout, “They’re actually bison!” But I didn’t, figuring that it might put a damper on the act.

Several other acts followed, including an archer who shot an apple off his lovely assistant’s head (talk about trust in the workplace!) and a trio of guys who performed insane aerial stunts with BMX bicycles.

Finally, the ringmaster directed our attention to the spherical cage. He announced that not one, not two, but three motorcycles would be in the Sphere of Death, or whatever it was called.

The motorcycles entered the cage one by one and began to zoom around, demonstrating how centrifugal force can be used to counteract gravity. Gloria and Evie didn’t seem to care about the physics; they simply enjoyed the moment to its fullest.

After the act ended, the motorcyclists took positions in the center ring. As the ringmaster introduced them to the audience the motorcyclists took off their helmets, revealing that two of them were women.

“Did you see that?” Gloria exclaimed excitedly to my wife. “Two of them are girls!”

The circus ended, and we got up to leave. Gloria came over and gave my wife and me a hug.        

“What did you think?” I asked my wife as we motored homeward.

“I think we had the best seats in the house,” she replied with a happy, grandmotherly smile.

Jerry’s book, “Dear County Agent Guy” can be found at www.workman.com and in bookstores nationwide.