Circus, circus

When I was a kid, I loved the circus. Loved, loved, loved it, and not just because Gunther Gebel-Williams' son was really cute and about 16 years old when I was going to see Ringling Brothers in Philly. I don't know how often we went, I don't remember any of the acts (other than Williams, and that's probably just because he was featured prominently in the program ... which I still have, thank you very much), but I remember liking it. And I remember seeing the unicorn.

All throughout college I wanted to go see the circus, but the big ones never came anywhere near Blacksburg, and I didn't feel like wasting time on some little podunk circus that was small enough to come to town. It wasn't until I graduated that I was able to get to see the circus again.

We went in 1995 or 1996, sometime during the first year we lived in Cleveland. Jason was only lukewarm on the whole idea, but he humored me, and I have a half-dozen blurry pictures to prove it. The only act that year that really stuck in my head involved (dancer? acrobats? whatever ...) on rigs that were worn like belts, with bungee cords attached near each hip. The performers bounced around on these things, pretty much like Angelina Jolie did (in her pajamas!) in the Tomb Raider movie. The act was well-choreographed and brand-spankin' new at the time, and I remember it being beautiful in spite of the tacky blacklight glow costumes they had to wear.

We haven't been back to the circus since then ... until Sunday, that is. We were lucky enough to get free tickets to see the Ringling Brothers circus, courtesy of Jason's employer. We got there extra early so that Liza could see the pre-show stuff, where the audience is allowed to come down into the ring to see the performers up close. Perfect! We thought she'd have a chance to check things out when it wasn't so crowded, see the people up close before the show, so it wouldn't matter whether we had good seats or not.

We found the company's loge pretty quickly, but it hadn't been opened yet, so we wandered down the aisle to check out the action from up high. Give the child time to get used to the idea, see how big the place is, that sort of thing. Liza loved it because she could see everything and there was absolutely no one around us.

Notice how many people are down on the floor of the arena? Think there's any chance we got the kid down there? Nope. "Liza, do you want to go down and see the elephant up close?" "I don't think so." "How about the costumes - look, you can try on the pretty costumes!" "I don't think so." etc.

Instead, we spent the whole preshow up at the edge of the balcony, where we admittedly had a better view than 90% of the people on the floor. We watched the rope walkers warm up, saw the elephant paint, watched the dogs doing flips, saw the lady twirling from a rope up in the air, etc. etc. Liza was interested, but every time the guy selling light up twirly things came by, she was way more interested in him than in the clowns. We managed to make it back to the loge without buying a light-up flashing magic wand, which I consider a triumph of sorts.

I think Liza thought the whole circus was the preshow, because she was a little upset when it ended and all the people started going back up into their seats. We got her some food from the loge, met all of the other company people, and tried to keep her from going ballistic before the start of the show. "Look! Popcorn!"

The lights went down, the ringmaster came out in his Pimpmaster 3000 cape (this is the toned down tux coat he had on underneat the Pimpmaster 3000), and the parade started ... and Liza started actually levitating, she was so excited. Jumping up and down, whacking random people, babbling excitedly in a decidedly "outside" voice - she was working it all. I looked over at Jason and said (well, 'mouthed,' really, given the noise level), "This is why it would have been worth it, even if we had to pay $20 a person for the nosebleed seats."

She was on her best behavior during the whole first half of the circus, watching attentively, not upsetting any sticky liquids on herself, and not disturbing the other people in the loge (too much). At intermission I sent Jason out to get a program, a DVD, and a blinky magic wand - "Dude, it's cheaper than the tickets were going to be, so suck it up." Plus, I always wanted one when I was a kid, and I never got one, so my kid was going to get one, darn it.

Liza, meanwhile, was on the ragged edge ... it was past her normal naptime, she'd been bouncing around the loge like a maniac for two hours, etc. Add to that the entrance of a 2-foot-long blinky magic wand, and the potential for disaster was great. After just a few acts in the second half, Liza announced that she was ready to go home.

In what I consider to be a monumental feat of parenting prowess, we didn't even try to convince her to stay for the last 20 minutes of the show, just grabbed our stuff and hit the door running. I was only barely bitter about having to miss the human cannonball act at the end of the show. After all, we have the DVD. And the program. And the light up blinky magic wand. And I appear to have a legitimate reason to get MY circus fix every year for the forseeable future.