When our friend Chad called for circus tickets for us all a few weeks ago, he called the moment they went on sale and said "Give me the best seats in the house." I have got to start saying that. I had no idea that people actually said that, and even less that it could actually work, but it did, and I've resolved to start demanding "the best" from people when I have the chance.
Our seats for the circus, as I've hinted, were pretty much the best. Front row, dead center. We were close enough to tell which of the contortionists were sacrificing high school to live with the circus and which ones were old enough to have gone to high school in a one room school house. We were close enough that the one really awesome, old school clown chose Chad to parade around and make fun of him. We could smell the elephants. Well, everybody could probably smell them.
Cynical parent that I am, I was not ready to enjoy the circus as much as I did--I thought it'd either be just kind of cheesy or even a little sad when I saw the poor animals. I loved it though--there were so many people who could do so many pretty cool things, things that are hard to do and require dedication, like juggling lots of objects or making people laugh or bending yourself into funny shapes.
Even more amazing is that you'd see one lady balancing on the head of a pin or something and then twenty minutes later you'd see the same lady out there in a different costume and with a different name training crocodiles. It was, yes, just like the ringleader kept saying, amazing.
You see how cool it is to watch people who know how to do all these cool things, though, and you start to think to yourself "what can I do? I can't do anything." I can drive a car. Wow. I can put a golf ball into a pond. Spectacular.
I'm going to start demanding the best seat in the house, and I'm going to start learning how to do cool things. Thank you for opening my eyes, circus people.
2 comments:
You already can do a cool thing. Your an awesome english teacher.
And those are hard to come by!
You know I ALWAYS ask for the best seat in the house...And i know that on more than one occasion it has, in fact, resulted in better seats. Incidentally, I didn't do this over the summer when we went to the circus, but we still got front row. The funny thing is that on more than one occasion I've realised that sometimes it's better to be a bit further back. We got the "best seats in the house" for Nemo on Ice last year, and Clifford Live! last weekend -- both in the first 5 rows. even though it holds the kids' attention better being up close, the view of the action is really better about 15-20 rows back. On the other hand, I had front row tickets for Bright Eyes recently and we were a bit surprised to learn the Conor Oberst is a bit of a spitter when he sings. he didn't get me, but he got the swooning h.s. girls next to us quite a lot.
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