I’d forgotten how many of our most worn-out metaphors—okay, I’ll just say it, they’re clichés—are borrowed from the circus. Those of us who hold down jobs and raise children refer to ourselves as “jugglers.” When the pressure gets really intense, we say that we’re performing a “high-wire act.” Or that we feel we’ve been “shot out of a cannon.” And at those moments when life truly feels out of control—whether in an enjoyably madcap or a borderline psychotic way—we just come right out and call it a “three-ring circus.” I could go on. I’ll try not to.

I was reminded of all of this as I sat marveling at this morning’s performance of “Zing, Zang, Zoom,” the latest from Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey (and my first experience ever, I might add, of “the Greatest Show on Earth®”). The first miraculous wonder? To this jaded New Yorker, it was how easily and quickly my sister, my husband and I and our two daughters, ages 6 and 4, were able to get from our parked car to our seats in the arena. The prospect of negotiating the crowds at Madison Square Garden for the same show in New York makes me queasier than the sight of the two acrobats jumping rope atop two enormous, rapidly revolving hamster wheels about two stories off the ground. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

My daughters were quite unaware of the circus metaphors swirling around in their mother’s head. Their eyes grew steadily bigger as they watched lithe ladies dressed like butterflies swinging, flipping, and spinning from long white bed sheets (or so they appeared) suspended from the ceiling. They saw an elephant—one of the elephants they had watched eating a “brunch” of entire bunches of bananas and smashed watermelons only the day before—disappear before their eyes. They watched poodles and terriers “jump through hoops” (oops, there’s another one) and even saw a lucky group of volunteer kids from the audience levitate their parents. My husband claims he knows how this last trick was done. I’m all ears.

I think my favorite metaphor of the day was the appearance and ongoing mischief of Gravity—the clown who brings everyone down. I’m sure the poignancy of it escaped my kids’ notice. They just saw him as “the mean guy,” no different from Ursula the sea witch in “The Little Mermaid” or Maleficent in “Sleeping Beauty.” But I loved the idea of Gravity, with his team of Heavies, causing trouble at the circus—always present, lurking in the wings. When the scamp first appears, “Zingmaster” Alex (aided by the lovely Levitytia) tells him “there’s no place for Gravity at the circus!” And he’s right, to a point—the circus is all about defying rules and logic. Who in their right mind would go into a ring with a dozen Bengal tigers and yell at them until they dance on their hind legs and beg with no more dignity than the aforementioned poodles? But by the end, Alex realizes that Gravity does have a place at the circus. Without him and those pesky Heavies, where would be the wonder in all that high flying? The beauty of rules is, they’re breakable. Sometimes. (Don’t tell the kids.)

Speaking of defying rules, we broke our own at intermission. We told the girls before we went in that we weren’t going to be buying anything—no treats, no toys. The circus itself was treat enough. By intermission my sister had bought the girls two coloring books, my husband was happily shelling peanuts, and I was the proud possessor of a $9 lemonade (although, in my own defense, the flip-top bottle came with a two-year warranty). As old P.T. Barnum said, there’s a sucker born every minute.

Blogged by: Shannon Barr
Photos Courtesy of Feld Entertainment