family circus
Posted on April 20, 2007
Filed Under kids, parenting, snark |
It’s just so hard to impress the children these days. In the age of on-demand, wireless, high def, fiber optic, all-out extraordinary home entertainment, it’s just impossible to thrill them.
But oh, how I tried. Today was the most expensive two hours of their little lives. We rode into town for The Big Apple Circus ($180 for three tickets). I parked the car in a Government Center garage designed to rape tourists who have thrown up their hands in despair having reached a navigational cross roads - another twenty minutes in the car looking for fairly priced parking with two excited children punching each other in the back seat or immediate parking spot with hefty price tag. I settled for sanity ($34 for two hours). We stopped in at a mediocre sandwich shop where O and G used the filthy bathroom with no hand soap and then stared at suspicious beef noodle soup until it was whisked away from beneath their offended noses and then they visited the filthy bathroom with no hand soap again ($28 for wasted food, the bathroom and the hepatitis were free).
Even though we’d sunk $242 before smelling an elephant, I had great big honking hopes for this performance and I wasn’t disappointed…the Russian aerialists turned effortless flips, catching each other by one hand, then by one foot, while hanging upside down from a trapeze 40 feet above our heads. I felt dizzy and gleeful, admiring their talent and bravery. But G needed to go to the bathroom (AGAIN) and was really focused on getting some cotton candy because the little boy in front of her was chin deep in his own sugar high.
We visited the Porta-John and spent $8 on a blue cotton candy cone bigger than her head and returned to our seats for the Zhengzhou Acrobatic Troupe who performed amazing feats of physical strength climbing up huge swing poles and plunging down them head first, stopping themselves from plummeting to their death with only their hands. They swung on these poles and jumped from one to the other, catching the next pole with their legs and swinging off again.
I was really worried that someone was going to miss their trick and so was the staff running beneath the troupe with big nets that looked like they’d do little to cushion the fall. There were oooh’s and ahhh’s from the crowd but O missed it all because he was busy whining that he needed popcorn AND a drink. I tried to stall until intermission but he insisted that if I didn’t get the popcorn right away then I loved G more because I had bought her cotton candy.
The three of us made our way to the concession stand again where we spent $10 getting O his treat, missing the clown/dog routine where canines walked on tightropes and climbed ladders and clapped.
We did catch the amazing woman who could suspend herself upside down on one hand, legs extending and scissoring in a gravity defying core strength demonstration. She held herself horizontal to the floor while wrapping her arms around a strong man’s torso.
The duo twisted and turned, supporting each others weight on the balance of their fingers. Anyone who’s ever seen this hand-to-hand routine performed knows what I mean when I say it was like watching a mixture of upside down Pilates and Kung Fu with a little levitation mixed in. Neither child seemed overly impressed by jaw dropping display of balance and fitness. O was mopping at his seat where he had spilled his lemonade and G was studying the crowd behind her. Their was a child that had captured her attention. Somehow this little boy confined to a wheel chair was more interesting to her than the extraordinary entertainments in the ring.
Some thirty minutes later when the jump roping jugglers closed the show and the circus performers came on for their curtain call, my kids were fast asleep in their seats having a 250 dollar nap.
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circus tickets: $180
sugar high: $18
learning that kids who watch cartoons find it hard to be impressed by any feats bounded by the laws of physics: worthless (because next time it’ll be something else).
What’s the quip that covers 90% of parenting? “Oh no, not another learning experience.”