By Sue Murphy
Well, that’s it. I’ll never ever be able to run away and join the circus.
The circus is shutting down. It’s true. The Ringling Brothers, Mr. Barnum and Mr. Bailey, all the circus grand pooh-bahs, got together and decided to pack up their tents for good. The last of the Greatest Shows on Earth will be May 21 in Uniondale, New York. It doesn’t seem possible.
I should have seen it coming. After a lot of pressure from animal rights organizations, the Greatest Show retired the Greatest Elephants. I understand that. Big animals, small cages. It wasn’t fair. Besides, there’s only so long you can hold onto your neighbor’s tail and walk around in a circle before you
start to wonder if there isn’t more to life. I don’t know where the elephants are going now, but I hope it’s to an elephant retirement community where they can walk wherever they please.
Of course, after renegotiating the elephant contract, it would only be a matter of time before the horses and seals and jewel-bedecked poodles unionized and demanded equal treatment. The traveling circus was
doomed.
I’m glad someone was looking out for the animals. Now, we just have to find someone to look out for the human circus performers. The cotton candy and taffy apple people can filter off to carnivals and state fairs. The ringmaster can audition for a spot on “Iron Chef” or “Dancing with the Stars.” The guys who drove motorcycles around inside the giant cage of death might do well on the X Games circuit, but where do you find employment if you’ve spent the past 10 years riding bareback with an ostrich feather sticking out of your tiara? What’s your next move if your last job was swinging from a trapeze? If the career history blank on your resume says, “being shot out of a cannon,” what will the unemployment counselor suggest?
A lot of non-circus people will be affected, too – purveyors of sawdust, sequin manufacturers, the people who make those must-have light-up wands that your mother puts in “time out” immediately after you get home because its only post-circus function is to bop your brother on the head. The fallout from the Greatest Closing on Earth is going to trickle right down to the people who swept up the peanut shells after the crowds went home.
Maybe, after a nice long vacation, the circus folks will change their minds. Maybe a year from now they’ll send out a Facebook shout-out to the old big top gang to meet up at the Circus Museum in Baraboo, Wisconsin, where they’ll decide to get the show back on the road. It could happen. I mean, UAB is getting their football program back, right? There’s been no kickoff yet but that’s what I heard.
For legal reasons, the group might need a new name, like “So You Think You’ve Seen Everything” or “Hold Onto Your Hats, Hoboken.” My money’s on “The Greatest Show on Earth: Part Deux.” After a bit of negotiating, the elephants and seals and ponies will be allowed to make up their own acts. They’ll get the tiaras, and the bareback riders will prance along beside them. The cannons will fire non-toxic Nerf balls, the trapeze artists will be wearing OSHA-approved harnesses, and the head-bopping wands will be made out of biodegradable plastic.
The Revenge of the Greatest Show on Earth. I love it, and I’ll be right there in the front row with my popcorn on opening night. The only problem is … where am I going to run away to until then?
