My husband and I decided to surprise the girls with an excursion to the Ringling Brothers & Barnum Bailey Circus the other day. We rarely succeed in the surprise thing, but this time we managed to keep the lid on it until we arrived at the parking lot, where there was a big sign that said “Park here for circus.”
Chloe saw it and gasped in joy. The happiness lasted for about fifteen minutes, until we entered the arena and she saw the souvenir stand. Recipe for disaster those ridiculous souvenir stands. Especially when there’s not one thing under $10. In fact, almost everything was over $20! And everything was stupid. Chloe tried. And tried. And tried. But we did not relent. I told her the circus tickets were gift enough. Which, of course, was no consolation to my 7-year old.
She finally turned her attention to something else – food. But it was 10:30 in the morning, and there was no healthy snack to be had. And she didn’t want to eat the banana I diligently packed. There was a ton of cotton candy, however. Topped with a circus hat. For $12 a pop, if I heard correctly (it’s possible it was only $6, but still…). Aside from the fact that there was no way in hell I was going to allow her to eat an oversized glob of sugar at 10:30 in the morning, I wasn’t going to spend that kind of money on an oversized glob of sugar either.
For an interminably long 5-10 minutes, we were at a standstill. She then settled on popcorn. And was happy. Until she remembered the souvenirs. By that point, however, we had already watched most of the show (which was over 2 hours long), and we let her wallow in self-pity.
Luckily, there was plenty of surrounding noise. Because at one point both Chloe and Sophie were moaning and groaning. At least the motorcycles speeding around in the orb were cool.