Ladies and Gentlemen! Children of All Ages!

Think it’s too late for me to run away and join the circus? Probably so. At age eight, I briefly considered becoming a professional clown after I saw a Nova special on clown colleges. Around that time, I also told my parents I wanted to be a scat singer. Mom and Dad owned a lot of jazz records, and I couldn’t think of a better job than joyfully crooning nonsense words. Actually, “clown” and/or “scat singer” still sound like swell occupations to me. Doobie doobie doo, honk, honk, wild applause.

The Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus wasn’t handing out applications today, but they did sell me a soft pretzel and a Pepsi and cotton candy and a t-shirt and tall, puffy hat. When Mary bought tickets for our circus outing, I told myself that if I was going to attend the Greatest Show on Earth, I was going to go all out, man.

And that’s one perk of being an adult at the circus -- I could purchase whatever junky food and overpriced souvenir my kid-at-heart craved. Nachos? Sold. Snow cone in a unicorn cup? Sold. Flashing light saber? Zing, zing. As Mary and I took our seats on row K, a child behind me begged for circus snacks. “No, son,” the Responsible Adult intoned. “We just ate.” I licked the pretzel salt off my fingers and smiled. (Goofus, not Gallant. Told you.)

Here’s another reason 20-somethings should attend the circus: the performers aren’t sequined super-beings…they’re just like us. By “just like us,” I mean close to our age but with tighter hamstrings. I don’t remember much about circus outings from my childhood, but I do know that the tightrope walkers and trapeze artists seemed as cartoonish as Tom and Jerry. Tom puts firecrackers in Jerry’s mouse hole; Jerry reroutes the fuse to Tom’s litter box and escapes through a window. Yawn. As I watched Mr. Daredevil Clown teeter atop the Rings of Vertigo, I thought, “This guy might actually fall.” Also, “Wonder how he amuses himself on the weekends. Does his wife make him rotate the tires?”

On the ride home, I contemplated the metaphorical meaning of big-top frenzy. How is life like the circus? How is my life like the circus?

I know this would make a good essay, but I can’t come up with anything clever. Maybe my brain is clouded from salt-and-sugar overdose.

Shakespeare said it better, anyway. All the world’s a three-ring circus. On the left, the slapstick clowns, stumbling over their enormous shoes and slipping on banana peels, getting a kick out of their mistakes. In the center, the animal tamer, teaching a sharp-toothed beast to dance on its hind legs, and trying to hide the fact he’s scared out of his mind. Stage left is something calmer, like a softly singing Chihuahua. It’s all happening at once -- the pratfalls, the fear, the singing and giggling. All part of the show.

I’m glad I have a seat, and I can buy my own candy.