The Circus

We took the girls to the circus the other day. One of the advantages of not having children is that you don’t have to do this, or face the guilt of not doing it. Who would deny a child the thrill of the circus? I would. Zoos are bad enough. but circuses are an animal Guantanamo, and I say this while still holding to the firm belief that some of those PETA people are just nuts. But still. 

We got free tickets for the kids, which I thought were a deal—a local store was handing them out—but when we got there I realized I’d been scammed. I had an extra free ticket and couldn’t give it away: everybody had them. Adult tickets, however, cost $26 apiece. For $52, plus roughly another $50 spent on cotton candy and other junk, we got to wait 35 minutes for the show to start, during which time we were treated to the spectacle of an arthritic looking elephant parading in a circle carrying load after load of people on his/her back, four or five at a time. It made me wonder about Elephant Karma. What starving family’s crops had this elephant trampled in some previous life, to merit such treatment in this one? Many of them were seriously obese—the people, I mean—and the elephant looked as if every step hurt. Perhaps this was my imagination, but I don't think so. 

Then the show started and the tiger tamer came out. The tigers looked extremely bored, while the guy in the tight black pants (no shirt, long shaggy white hair, kind of a dime-store Seigfried and Roy effect) tried to ramp up the excitement by hopping around, snapping his long whip and occasionally shaking the bars of the cage himself. Frankly, I wouldn’t have been scared of the tigers even without the cage, but the man worried me. The tigers jumped through a hoop of fire and swapped places with each other in a lethargic kind of way, and then after awhile that was over. Then came a clown act, which was actually kind of amusing, except that it featured an old jalopy car that made such loud BANGS! periodically that half the babies in the place started to cry at the same instant.

After him came the horses—three large black ones and one tiny white miniature horse. The latter ran around the ring underneath the other three. The music was heavy and foreboding. I think it was supposed to have an imposing effect, but to me it looked more like the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse—Fire, Famine, Pestilence and the Heartbreak of Psoriasis. Awe-inspiring it wasn’t. After that the gymnasts did their thing, which was moderately interesting, and then it was intermission, at which point I looked at David, he looked at me, and we said in unison, “Time to go.” Emma had a great time. Suzanne was not impressed. Too noisy, she said. Future generations will look back on this kind of entertainment the way we regard bear-baiting in Elizabethan England.