One Thing I’m Not Running Away to Join

So the circus is in town. Clowns spilling out of tiny cars! Death-defying acts! Stilt-walkers! Lions and elephants! Yay! We’ll be bringing our little guy the moment he’s old enough! An icon of Americana!

Or, no. Call me a grouch, call me a killjoy, but I hate it. I hated it even as a little child. No, I do not find clowns creepy or scary, the way Kramer does–I just find them tedious. Trapeze acts and high-wire walking always seemed to me just dumb: “I am risking my life in order to do something difficult but fundamentally pointless. But I’m doing it with a net, so it’s not really all that risky, either.” It’s as if you took an Olympic event, like skiing or bobsledding, then stripped out the competition aspect. Every performer at the circus gets a medal, just for Not Falling to His Death.

Add to that all the grim stories about mistreatment of animals–whether true or false–and the whole thing takes on a leaden, joyless cast. Plus, as I remember (and as the Times reports in that story linked up above) it’s a rather cynical entertainment enterprise. Ringling Bros. seems hellbent on separating you and your dollars, as rapaciously as George Steinbrenner, whose rapacious nature is at least a little more obvious. Plus there, at least, you get the sense that your overpriced ticket is buying a better shortstop than, say, the Kansas City Royals have, in the ongoing Moneyball backstage game. I seriously doubt that Ringling Bros. is out there trying to pick up an up-and-coming young lion tamer before a competing circus signs her out of Florida State.

The only time I get remotely warm feelings about the circus, in fact, is during the annual elephant parade, when the big gray beasts come into Manhattan through the Queens-Midtown Tunnel on foot. That, at least, connects the event to the New York life,  ever-so-slightly, and feels intimate in a way that nothing else about the circus does. Plus it goes directly past our apartment building–which means, if I have anything to say about it, it will have to be the only circus-attending our boy does until he’s old enough to buy his own tickets.