I feared the boy was too young for the circus, but there was one thing I was sure he would like: The animal open house. This began 90 minutes before the show and basically was, I understood, zoo-in-a-parking lot.
But 90 full minutes of animal open house plus more than 2 hours of circus would be too much for the boy. I was looking to strike a balance on the timing.
Of course you know where this is going: We missed the one thing I was sure the boy would love. We left 90 minutes before the start of the circus, thinking we'd have plenty of time. But we hit a traffic jam going into town (on a Sunday?) and I had to pay $7 to park on the top floor of a garage a damn good ways from the Erwin Center.
But I do not like to give up. Remember, I'm the guy who — when faced with an impossible connection at a Houston airport — yelled at an airline employee, "Don't tell me I'm not going to make it! Tell me which way to run!" (This was before 9/11. And I did run. And I didn't make it. But I was close.)
I put the boy on my shoulders and thudded down four flights of stairs, strode across several city blocks, and then staggered all the way around the Erwin Center, only to find a steady stream of circus-goers being ejected from the animals' parking-lot kingdom. No dice.
Sweaty, we went inside to the performers' open house, which was really just a thousand kids and their stunned parents standing en masse around a few performers. Once again, I hauled the boy onto my shoulders and tried to get him to look in the direction of jugglers, clowns, elephants and the like.
We could have gotten closer, but I didn't really want to be between a mass of people and an elephant, no matter how tame.
I hope he's having more fun than I am.
After awhile, we retreated to our seats. In an entirely expected development, there was somebody sitting in them. I chased them off. Our seats were perfect (for us). Top row, aisle seats, but with a fine view of the action. The location allowed nicely for a fidgety 3-year-old who would make 4 trips to the bathroom (two dry runs) over the next two hours and a fidgety 39-year-old who would make 2 concession trips to find ways to pacify the boy.
I can't imagine the inconvenience it would have caused if we were in the middle of a row. (Because, of course, the seats are squeezed together like sorority girls in front of a camera and no reasonably sized adult could make his way through without falling all over everyone.)
Anyway, we paid $7.50 for a bottle of water and a bag of M&Ms. They were selling beer, but at $7 for a 12-ounce cup. I was still tempted. I later found out that the cotton candy (which was packaged with a faux wizard's hat) was $12. Good thing I didn't get some. I would have told the guy to shit and fall in it when he told me it was $12 for a cloud of sugar and a cheap-ass hat.
The boy is intimidated by the seats: He hardly weighed enough to keep them from folding up on him.
For a moment, at least, he paid attention to the pre-show antics of the clowns and cheered them on. This is my $40 photo.
The view from our perch. Not bad.
Oh yeah, the circus. The boy was really too young to appreciate it, but I think he still had a pretty good time. The first half featured quite a bit of acrobatic performances set to music (the "Cirque de Soleil effect," Shannon called it) which were impressive in their own right, but not much for a 3-year-old. Sadly, he missed the human cannonball because he was focused on the M&Ms I bought to bribe him into sitting in his seat — a tradeoff that lasted as long as the M&Ms.
To a 3-year-old, I imagine this is just all light and noise.
The first half did have one elephant, which they made disappear (and I was pretty impressed with that), some horses that did impressive tricks and some zebras which seemed to be there to make the horses look good. The boy watched the animals pretty intently.
My camera does not have night vision. But if it did, it would look like this.
Bring on the elephants.
The second half featured the elephants and the tigers — including one pretty damn good magic trick where they turned the not-so-evil clown into a tiger. I'm still wondering how they did that one. It was worth the wait for the tigers, though the boy was getting pretty antsy by the time they appeared, and so was I.
We stepped out to buy the requisite $20 circus souvenir (which I really should have skipped since this was the last time he will ever be too young to ask me to buy him something, but I was feeling sentimental) and we never really returned to our seats. We watched another 5 minutes of the show from the top of the stairs, and then decided to call it a day.
By the time we made a bathroom break and made it halfway around the Erwin Center on my quest to orient myself and find our parking garage (which looked like every other parking garage on the horizon), people were coming out. I think we just missed the last 10 minutes. Or, in other words, the big finale.
If a tiger in a 3-piece suit jumped this motorcycle over a flaming elephant at the end … well, we missed it.
I don't think the boy cared, though. He was overstimulated and still high on M&Ms. Later that night he would have a pre-bedtime meltdown, but for now he was a satisfied zombie.
This time, it was up four flights of stairs with the boy on my shoulders (the best workout my legs have gotten in four years, easy) and into the comfort of the car, where we watched in the rearview mirror people who had apparently never before in their lives been in a parking garage pull out the wrong way and put a little "rage" in "garage."
Not for us, though. We were southbound.
