My 2 minutes of fame or: how I always wanted to join the Circus

I went to the Circus today with my two youngest daughters’ school classes. My primary job was to escort little boys to the bathroom if the need arose. Both teachers were ladies and were glad to have me on-board. So were my daughters.

Somehow we got front row seats. Sounds like a good thing except for the constant stream of peddlers hawking cotton candy, toys, and assorted Circus junk and of course if you are in front, everybody walks in front of you to make their way to concessions, bathrooms etc.

In the second half of a fairly short circus, a clown went out into the audience. He/she (couldn’t tell) started on the far side away from us and selected a man to come down into the ring. The clown proceeded to make his/her way around the small arena until he/she stood right in front of me. Having a young child on either side, I was sure he/she was coming to pick one of them. Circuses are for and about kids – right?

This clown didn’t talk but gestured and blew a whistle as if to say “You join them out in the ring.”

So I made my way out where two other guys were also starting to stand around wondering what have we gotten ourselves into. One more joined us in the center ring.

The clown made us stand in a line and to tell the truth I can’t recall everything I did (What happens at the circus, stays at the circus!) but one part required us to wiggle our hips in a sort of Macarena-type dance. Fortunately that was pretty short. Only the audience can say whether it was pretty or not.

Next he had us sit on four small stools. Each person facing a different section of the audience. By the way, the lights are bright and I couldn’t tell you anything about the audience outside the ring. The clown started positioning us against one another to the point where we were leaning back on each other. I should mention he first had us cross our arms over our chest. Finally we were leaned back to where we were laying across the knees of the next person.

All I can do is describe it like this: my head is in some guys lap. My lap now has some guys head in it and so on for all four of us. Then the clown takes our stools away. So all we have to hold ourselves up is each other. This requires much arching of the back and trying to hold your legs parallel to the floor.

(the picture above was sent to me by a co-worker who happened to be there)

All I can say is this was hard and after what seemed like an hour or so, my back was giving out and my legs were quivering. But something inside me didn’t want to be the one to make us fall so I kept tightening up and trying to keep myself from falling.



Then without warning we all toppled. Not sure who broke first but we fell in a heap.

The clown waved his/her arms for applause and we walked out of the ring and that was that.

But it is funny what people notice. On my way out I got lots of looks, quite a few “You were a good sport”s and my daughters seemed to like it a lot. One lady even said I’d end up on Google (she probably meant YouTube but I didn’t correct her) by the end of the day. We’ll see.

But I guess this probably qualifies as my brief stint of fame. It was fun and silly which is what I guess circuses are about anyway.