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CIRCUS! (Part 1)

I decided to break this up into two blog posts since there was a good amount of content... and it felt like it is almost too much content for one full post.  So... Here's part 1 of 2 of my day at the circus!  I'll write and post part 2 tomorrow.  Ooooooo, the suspense!  Well, you'll just have to wait for part 2.

{A QUICK BACKSTORY}

Yesterday I went to the circus randomly.  Well, it wasn't completely random, but it was definitely unexpected.

On Saturday after work I went out to grab dinner with some family friends.  My mom and this one lady know one another from WAY back in the day.  Before I was even born.  I stay at their house on the way to Maine each year in Connecticut.  Well, they gave me some tickets to this circus.  The reason they have the tickets is because they went on Saturday while I was at work.

But why the circus you ask?  Well the one daughter married a guy whose dad is associated with the circus.  I think he was actually in it as well as coordinating putting it together.  I believe he's one of the clowns.  I'm not clear if he is or not.  I know he worked to put the whole thing together, and I'll have to ask, but I believe he's one of the clowns in the show itself.  My first thought was... This was a circus in someone's backyard.  What kind of circus could possibly be in Plymouth Meeting, PA?  Also... If  family friend's dad in-law put it together... Maybe it's just like... Something he does for friends and family.  Although there were tickets.  So it had to be at least semi legit.  Well not only is it legit... But it's also a big thing they do every year to raise money for charity as well.  In fact, it's in its 75th year according to the ticket.  It's called the Lu Lu Shrine Circus.

At first I offered the tickets to some other people, people with kids because kids love the circus!  My brother and his daughter... They were busy.  Then I asked my coworker to see if he wanted to take his son.  No deal.  He wanted to work in his garden.  Then I asked a couple other friends.  No on seemed interested.  So, as the time of the show grew near, I just said... I'll just go.  What the heck right?  So, instead, I just went by myself.  I had two tickets, ended up only using one.  Initially, actually, my friend Cara had wanted to go when I asked her last minute a couple hours before the circus was to start after no one else seemed interested in taking the tickets.  Cara was with her sister and niece all the way in Delaware.  It was one those, I THINK I can make it, but lets play it by ear kind of deals.  She just wasn't going to make it back in time for the start of the circus... She was just way too far away even if she floored it the whole way on the highway.

So I went alone.

{THE CIRCUS PART ONE}

They were starting when I arrived.  There was some bit where they had fake airplane seats and the clowns were pretending to be on a plane about to take off.  They were supposed to be stowing things away and stop using oversized electronic devices but they weren't listening.  So the stewardesses had to come around and rip the stuff out of their hands.  Obviously the clowns got upset and then it turned into a big Three Stooges type of physical comedy bit.  With everyone knocking everyone in the face and what not and clowns falling down.

Following that the circus moved to the tiger cage directly behind the inflight Three Stooges act.

The lions and tigers (I'm fairly certain there were both, although I'm no lions and tigers expert so other than what I know from The Lion King, so it could have just been lions, or just tigers, there were no bears though!  I know that for sure.).

The one liger, we'll just call them ligers, jumped through a hoop.  Not just any hoop.  It was a hoop on fire.  So, that was neat.  There was a second liger that did a whole "I'm super lazy" act as well.  He would just flop down on the floor instead of jumping over an object.  Then the trainer would have to go over to him and "yell" him.  Or, because he was too far away to hear, he just threw his hands up and then put his hands on his waist tapping his toe and then shaking a finger at him in a disapproving manner.  Then the liger would get up and do the trick before being a bad ass again and not cooperating.  Then he would do another trick and then pretend to want to go to sleep.  They had silly music that went exactly with the liger's actions.  SO obviously it was rehearsed.  The liger seemed to know exactly when each part of the song would change and he would do his next roll over on the floor thing.

After the ligers did their thing and strutted their stuff a group of acrobats came out and climbed up to some elevated hoops that were about 100 feet off the ground.  They had no safety nets and no other means or mechanism to capture the performers should they fall.  It was a nail biter for sure!

The acrobats or trapeze... It wasn't really a trapeze thing... I guess acrobats... Did their thing.  They twirled and spun around through the hoops.  They dangled by one leg and one toe and one pinky finger. They did all their death defying trick things 100 feet in the air.

Then... A guy came out with his chairs.  This was even more of a nail biter!  He was up on a platform a good 10 feet up.  Then he began to stack chairs on top of each other and climb them.  Some of them he put sideways and longways and the whole time he was wiggling to and fro.  His whole body looked like a flag pole just swaying in the wind along with the chair stack.  At one point he seemed like he was going to fall.  But he didn't fall.  He just held steady and then he began to show off and egg the crowd on to ask if he should climb even higher.  Higher and higher he climbed until he was a good 50 feet off the ground standing only on chairs stacked.  At that point I was fairly sure he was making himself wobble and making himself appear unsteady so as to cause the crowd to be anxious as to what would happen.

It's all part of the act.  Create suspense.  But he knows he can do this in his sleep.  He knows he's done this so many times, he could do this in his sleep and still pull it off without the wobbles.