The Greatest Show on Earth, or so they claim.

We took our 2 year old son to the Barnum & Bailey Circus tonight. Don't get the wrong idea that we are made of money and could afford to dish out the $100+ to buy the tickets--Aaron won them on the radio. In fact, all of the fun things we have done in the past 5 years have been possible exclusively because of KRMG and my husband's desire to win things. The tickets to the Clay Aiken concert we saw a couple of years ago were won, along with the pre-screening movie tickets to see Surf's Up. For some reason, he has never been able to win any cash...but who needs money when you can go see the 2003 runner-up from American Idol perform at Tulsa's most run-down theatre?

Anyhoo--back to the circus. In an effort to prevent a hysterical public freak out, we spent the past week preparing Rowan for the clowns and giant animals he would be seeing. When the show started, he didn't even flinch. I, however, had a minor panic attack. I have never been fond of clowns, which is common in people from my generation. I realize that this is completely irrational. I mean, out of all the clowns I have known in my lifetime, only a handful of them have really done anything to hurt me.

I came to the conclusion tonight that the belief that children are afraid of the circus is false. It is really the parents that are scared, and they lie about their children's fear so that they don't have to sit through 2 hours of near-death experiences. Children are too naive to understand that riding a unicycle on a tight-rope while holding a flaming string in one's mouth could actually kill a person. Meanwhile, the parents are sitting in their seats, praying to God that the crazy man in spandex doesn't die and cause irreversible damage to their kids' psyches.

I am, by no means, an ultra-liberal PETA member, but I can't help but feel sorry for the trained circus animals. I know they are probably fed better, kept cleaner, and more comfortable than their wild counterparts, but there is no way full-grown elephants can enjoy standing on their two back legs atop a tiny silver podium while obnoxious kids twirl glow-sticks in the background. Really, it all boils down to my deep-seeded issues with the movie Dumbo. I envision these tiny little orphan baby elephants sitting in train cars waiting for the day that they will see their mamas again. Little do they know that their moms are busy being coerced into standing on their heads for the entertainment of humans. (And I'm not exaggerating--the elephants ACTUALLY stood on their heads. All of them! Well, except Sarah. Sarah really couldn't do much.)

Until tomorrow.

~H

P.S. I don't care what anyone says: Dumbo is, hands down, the saddest movie of all time.