The signs have been plastered all over every pole in town for a week: the circus is coming. I had figured I’d try to take Kaitlyn Wednesday afternoon. But today when it was too dreary outside to do much of anything, I suggested we go today. So Bill could see it, too. He’s heard about it; it is the same circus that Kaitlyn and I went to about a year ago when it came to town.
We got there about 40 minutes before the show was to start. The little ticket window hadn’t opened yet. We crowded under it’s cover along with two other early-bird families… all trying to stay out of the rain. A kid who works in the circus came out and chatted with an old lady waiting to buy her tickets. Finally, the woman who runs the ticket window appeared. Bill paid the extra money for the seats right up against the ring. (Which, just like the ski runs and bowling lanes and bike lanes, is called a piste in French.) We walked into the tent and Kaitlyn announced she was too scared to sit in our 45 Euro seats. Bill and I convinced her that the lions are well fed, they won’t be looking for little girls to munch on, and that we’d protect her. So she gave in. Reluctantly. We took our seats: three plastic lawn chairs right up against the edge of the ring.
Ever so slowly, the tent started to fill up. Bill was dismayed when I told him I didn’t expect the show to start at the advertised time of 4:00. Just before 4, I looked behind me at some of the circus performers dragging big metal pieces of something into the tent. They were assembling more bleachers to accommodate the sales going on outside. Even with that, the show was only about 15 minutes late getting started.
The opening act is the reason to go… and the reason Bill paid the extra money for our seats. Three lions and a police dog came into the ring via a tunnel made of rope. Even Kaitlyn thought it looked a little too easy for the lions to gnaw through. Again, we assured her they are well fed and don’t need to snack on rope. One by one, the lionesses took their places on the three stools set around the ring. One was close enough to us we could have reached out and touched her if we’d been insane; she could have done the same with us. And she was most definitely close enough to smell. Whew! A pouring rain and a lion is a nasty mix. Kaitlyn covered her ears through the entire act because the cracking of the whip was too loud. When it was over, the lions returned to their home via the tunnel and then the circus performers disassembled the cage that had surrounded the ring. I videotaped it, so I know, it took just under two minutes. Safe. (Bill says he watched how it was done and that it was really quite sturdy. Glad we didn’t have to find out.)
The lions were followed by a parade of what is, I suppose, usual circus acts. A girl who can bend backwards over and over in time to some slow music (she must be popular), a juggler who was quite brave to juggle knives and sticks set on fire since he kept dropping the rings, horses , a donkey, a llama who jumps over a stick, a camel whose front hump jiggled as he ran in a circle, a clown, snakes. The snake act was just creepy. It started with that same little boy who’d chatted up the old woman in line. He carried out a snake wrapped around his neck. Oh, and he was dressed like some sort of snake charmer. A bigger snake came out wrapped around another performer. Then the ringmaster asked for two volunteers. First, a man. They took the two snakes and draped them over his shoulders… knowing (I figure) that the snakes would wind around him. Yuck. Then they found a woman to take part. She had to lie on the ground, then they put the big snake up her shirt and it slithered out the top and around her neck into her hair. Super yuck.
During the intermission, Kaitlyn wanted to buy a balloon. So she turned to Bill and said Daddy, give me money so I can buy a balloon. Ever since I let her buy her own popcorn at the puppet show, she thinks she can do this all on her own. With our cash, of course. Miss Flexible came around selling tickets that we figured you then turned in for a balloon or flag or other silly trinket. We bought one ticket then let Kaitlyn go cash it on her own. (The balloons were only a few feet away from us, we could see her the whole time.) She’d told us she just needed to say s’il vous plait, rouge to get a red balloon. We watched her hand the guy her ticket and get a yellow balloon. But she was happy because it has a cartoon of a dog on it. Bill warned her to be careful so it doesn’t pop, and she has spent the rest of the evening terrified it will touch something that will cause it to burst. When she went to bed, she carefully set her balloon on the pillows on the couch… for safekeeping. If only she’d take that much care with all those stupid Polly Pocket pieces she just leaves lying around.
By the time she made it to the stand carrying her ticket, its a good thing the price hadn’t been raised, or she would have been forced to make a baloon payment.