My mother (94) and an older cousin of mine (Gaby as in Gabrielle, 87) both live in the same assisted living home in Mission Viejo…my wife visits them more often than I do; so when she heard the Circus was in town (Laguna Hills Mall parking lot) it was decided to take them there on a Sunday afternoon… I’m going to start visiting them more often so this weekend stuff doesn’t get completely out of hand.
Mom hadn’t been to a circus since before she was married, 68 years ago, and Gaby had never, ever been… they get around in walkers but this time we were fortunate to have wheelchairs… they were excited to see lions, tigers, elephants and other wild creatures…we bought drinks, popcorn and were seated at ring side for the show…
At the main entrance circus vendors sold food, drinks, stuffed animals and toys…there was even a lady who painted faces for $5… some sample pictures of her painted faces were hung up on her both but they all looked too childish, like mouse faces with whiskers and fake mouse noses we would have had to by them a nose and hat that finished the face…way too much trouble and maybe too scary for them if they ever saw each other…There was a balloon guy blowing animals that all looked like giraffes, snakes and wiener dogs…but in different colors…
An usher rolled and walked us to our seats straight to ringside…great seats real close to the action…I thought it unusual there was only one ring instead of the anticipated three, and it was rather small, about the size of a small house, but circular…oh well, I thought, maybe the animals will all be dwarf varieties…we could hardly wait to see the dwarf elephant…
(I Googled Circus Vargas after writing this and found out that they failed to meet Federal standards for care of animals…)
so, no animals...
Even before the show started vendors walked the aisles selling drinks, pop corn, candy and Circus ‘Souvenirs’… we bought mom and Gaby each a plastic battery operated colored wand (dazzlingly colorful) that they joyfully waved during the show… every one around us thought they were cute as hell…and they were…wavers in wheelchairs…
so cool…
The best part of the afternoon was that neither one of them had to go to the bathroom, which were port-o-potties that made everyone hold it until they got home…
thank God for Depends...
And then the guy in the top hat (ringmaster?) came out and thanked everyone for being there and to not attempt to get into the ring or throw anything at the performers…
later I realized how important this message was…
The first act came out and of course they were three horrible little clowns…they all looked strangely alike with huge shoes and red noses, and were not at all funny…Mom and Gaby waved their wands in glee…I wished they’d been magic wands to make the three guys disappear...the good thing about clowns is that can’t screw up and they were all having the standard bad hair day too…
I still hate clowns…
The following act was one celebrating our troops and war heroes and others, some which I had never heard of…I could not believe that one of the ‘vendor ladies’ selling stuff out front was leading the act waving an American flag who, when the act was over, was pulled magically into the air on an invisible wire we could all see…
nice touch…
Next came a Matador act performed by the ‘usher’ who took us to our seats…he had a full dress Matador suit on while a little Pug dog with glued on horns jumped up at the waving red cape…Hola!
Following these were several tumbling acts, trampoline acrobats and jugglers (yeah, they dropped more than their share of bottles and batons)…I wasn’t surprised that some of the performers also sold programs, food and tickets…I was getting the picture…finally an intermission happened…we would have snuck out if it hadn’t been for our wheel chaired guests…I had a few martinis later at home…
The Amazing Yeromenko’s and The Flying Tabares’s then performed the best aerial act this side of the Ukraine, where they came from…funny thing is I thought I saw the Paint-your-face-lady up on the stand catching the swaying bar waving her hands like an assistant to a magician after every trapeze trick…
wonderful, just wonderful…
One of the final acts starred Miss Bachliysicki’s Phenomenal Hula Hoop Review…I looked up her name on Google...her act wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be…she incredibly twirled about 403 hoops for a few seconds at least…
I never lie...
Google also made me aware that this Circus Vargas circus had about 25 people in it including husbands, wives and I’m sure a few in-laws from the Ukraine, no doubt who were multi-talented performers, face painters, acrobats and vendors...
Walking and rolling out of there at the end was like dieing and going to Heaven…
Today I was on line researching the City of Cypress, CA for a park proposal we’re writing. In the Recreation Dep’t section, just for the heck of it, I clicked on ‘recreation frequently asked questions’,
