A few weeks ago I was reading a blog from someone who is totally freaked out by Cirque du Soleil and contortionists and various other carny-folk, I would assume. Me, I'm a HUGE fan of Cirque, and I try to catch all of their shows that I can make it to. Anyway, reading about this blogger totally reminded me of SMB.
SMB was TERRIFIED of midgets... little people... I apologize if I'm not using the PC term here. Seriously... she'd hyperventilate, cry, run away. No idea why... I just know it was real.
... I'm sure you can see where this is going...
I got SMB and I tickets to go see Cirque du Soleil... TennisSkirt and her hubby went too and had seats a few rows in front of ours. I realize there is a bit of risk in taking a someone with an irrational reaction to little people to a circus type show, but I figure, we'll have our seats, the show will be on the stage. Cool. No big deal, right?
Wrong. Very wrong.
So the "story" is about a dead clown... or something like that. Anyway, one of the characters is an impossibly small lady. She was SO stinkin' cute. I'm sure she'd kick me in my shins if she knew I was calling her stinkin' cute, but she was. She had mad twisty skills, yo. This lady was a spry little thing.
SMB wasn't a fan. Not. At. All.
But it's cool... we're 20 rows back... she's on her stage doing her contortionist act, and we're safely in our seats.
Until they hooked her to giant helium balloons.
And sent her floating out into the audience.
Like this:
And she'd say "weeeeeee" and giggle and she was floating over the audience and people were putting their hands over their head and she'd sort of float down and they'd give her a little push and it was like the human equivalent of the whole inflatable beach ball going through the audience at a concert. It was great! Entertaining, interesting, thoughtful, exciting.
Unless, that is, you happen to be sitting next to an irrational SMB. This little act sent her into FULL on panic mode. It was hilarious. This flying little balloon lady was no where near us... they'd have had to connect a propeller to her balloons to get her going in our direction fast enough to even get CLOSE to touching us, but SMB was convinced she was going to sprout a jet pack and zoom zoom right into her lap.
I don't know if you've ever been to a Cirque big-top tent show thing, but the seats... they're not roomy. They'd probably be comfortable for the spry little lady, but that's about it. SMB pretty much crawled UNDER her seat. The looks on the faces of the people on the other side of her were priceless. I just smiled and was like, what? Never seen anyone crawl under their seat at a fancy circus show? You mean this isn't a normal reaction to a spry flying balloon midget act? Oh.
When they floated her off stage and I was able to convince SMB to come back to the correct side of her seat, we both watched the rest of the show in slack-jawed amazement. I'm pretty sure she was planning to run off and join the circus after that.
She'd have made an excellent carny. She probably would have fallen madly in love with a little person, and would have been riddled with guilt about all of her irrational freak outs.
...or perhaps she would have just hung out with the trapeze guys. That sounds more like her style.
That is all,
SBC
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