The Circus

Blue lines on a white page, I can still see the words in my mind's eye. My fifth-grade English assignment was to write about anything we thought was fun. It had to be, oh horrors, two whole pages long! All weekend I puzzled over this assignment like my life depended on it, trying to come up with ideas. Not able to put it off any longer, on Sunday afternoon I settled in for a session of torture at the kitchen table. With pen in hand, a pack of three-hole notebook paper in front of me, and a dictionary, I began. After writing first page after first page, then crumbling the paper up into balls that I tossed across the kitchen into the trash can, some successfully, some not so much, I finally settled upon the topic, the Circus.

Circuses had not yet become politically and environmentally incorrect, and our family had just been to one a few weeks prior to the writing assignment. Still fresh in my memory were the mounds of elephant poop, which the pretty tightrope walkers had to slog through to get to their perches. Yuck. The frightening clowns who made my little sister pee her pants, and the most fascinating show of all, the trapeze family who wore glittery, shiny costumes and flew high above us.

I was certain this would not only be easy to knock off before the Disney Family Hour came on at eight o'clock, but I would have it done probably in time for The Ted Mack Amateur Hour, which came on at seven. That's how kids used to keep track of the time when we were indoors. We were walking TV Guides, and walking TV remotes back then.

So, I began to write:

'We went to the circus two weeks ago and saw elephants and tigers.' Nope. There had to be a better way to say that, I thought. 'We visited the circus." No. I flipped through the dictionary to the word, 'circus', hoping for inspiration.

"noun,plural cir·cus·es.

"a large public entertainment, typically presented in one or more very large tents or in an outdoor or indoor arena, featuring exhibitions of pageantry, feats of skill and daring, performing animals, etc., interspersed throughout with the slapstick antics of clowns.:"

Wonderful. Now I had to look up pageantry, interspersed and slapstick. This began my love/hate relationship with the rabbit hole of research. Interesting beyond belief, but time-consuming. I checked the clock on the oven and it was closing in on Five-fifty. I didn't have a whole lot of consumable time left, so I guessed. Pageantry was probably a long word for fancy. Interspersed was, interspersed. I had no idea. Slapstick. I knew what antics were, so clowns doing slapstick antics might have been hitting each other with stuff. Yeah, that sounded right.

I began again with a fresh page.

'The circus we went to was in a big, red and white striped tent. We watched the people who worked there give the big elephants showers and scrub them with big brooms. Some of the elephants didn't like it and sprayed the people with snotty water from their big noses. I'm glad I don't work at a circus giving elephants showers.

'We wanted popcorn but Daddy said "No. The popcorn was dirty and we would get sick." Mommy said he was just being a cheapskate.

"My sister Jayne cried and held her breath to get a balloon. Daddy said she could hold her breath all day he'd be damned if he was going to pay $1.00 for a sack of clown's breath. Mommy said the cheapskate thing again.

"Daddy made us sit near the exit, just in case the lions and tigers got loose and tried to eat people. He told us we'd be able to run away faster than the other people and they'd get eaten first, so the animals wouldn't be hungry anymore, and we'd be safe. But, then he got mad because people kept having to walk past us to get to other seats.

"Then a clown was walking around the tent yelling about popcorn, candy apples, and cotton candy for a dollar. Jayne started crying again and wanted everything. Daddy said, "I'm not paying a dollar for something those clowns made. You'll get a tummy ache and I'll have to pay ten dollars for the doctor bill." So, that was that, except the clown got real close to Jayne and she peed her pants.

"Daddy said, "That's it. I can't take these kids anywhere, Betty. Look, she's got pee running into her sneakers, God damnit." Mommy yelled at him for saying a bad word and took Jayne to find a girl's room. While they were gone my big sister shoved me in the back of the head and told me to move my fat head she couldn't see. So, I accidentally leaned my elbow on her foot really really hard and she got mad and kicked at me but hit Daddy instead. Daddy said a lot of bad words and I was glad Mommy was gone.

"Mommy and Jayne missed the parade with the elephants and all the circus people. Daddy got mad because he spent good money on these tickets and they were going to miss half the show. I wasn't sure what good money was. But it made him really really mad. He said more bad words and took his hat off. We were going to get it when we got home. I could tell when he took his hat off his face was very very red.

"When Mommy and Jayne came back we all laughed at Jayne. She looked like one of the clowns. Mommy had to stuff her panties with toilet tissue to soak up the pee and Jayne was very funny to see. Then she started crying and Daddy got mad and promised we wouldn't ever come to another circus. "God damned waste of money taking these kids anywhere, Betty."

Then the fancy ladies climbed up to the top of the ladder things in their shiny bathing suits and started jumping from one swing to another. I forgot all about the pee and the balloons and the cotton candy. They were very beautiful. Like ballerinas in the air. I wanted to do that when I grew up. Even Daddy stopped complaining to watch and Mommy punched him in the arm.

There was a lot of fun stuff to see. The clowns had a funny dog that jumped up and ran off with their noses. There was other stuff too that was fun. It was very fun.

The end."

I had to rewrite it several times to make sure I didn't have any cross-outs. My Mother asked me if I needed her to look it over before handing it in. I just said, "I want it to be a surprise." Then quickly hid it in my three-ring binder before she could see it.

The Ted Mack Amateur Hour was over and so was the Disney Family Hour. It was time for bed and those hours had flown by without me noticing. I guess I sort of liked writing about 'stuff' that was very, very fun.

That writing assignment was something I had to do. However, in doing it I found a certain peace and comfort in connecting words so that others could see what I had experienced. When it was finished I realized that writing was a place I loved being lost in. It would become my space, my private world, how I would evermore deal with happy times, heartbreak, and memories. That was when my love affair with the pen began.