The whole ENfRPH staff attended a circus. While (now that you can read, Son, you’re old enough to understand) we have serious misgivings about circuses, and generally feel that animals should be treated more humanely and clowns way less humanely than circuses manage to do, we had fun. Tiny ate cotton candy and popcorn and a soft pretzel, and bounced around, and rode a pony and (please don’t hate us) an elephant.

The people stunts were way more impressive than I expected. The motorcycle sphere o’ death featuring three generations of Venezuelan lunatics was teeth-clenchingly stressful, and the ribbon climby-upy-spinny-aroundy (which Wikipedia insists on calling – and way less elegantly, I must add – aerial silk) was equally frightening.

During the cat-taming portion, the ENfRPHers chanted, as we are accustomed to during documentaries in which people interact with wild animals, “Eat her! Eat her!” The tigers, sadly, chose not to heed our advice.

Still, our politics ate at us. We teach him every day how important animals are and how they should be treated with dignity and respect. All of that is moot if he cannot experience them. I don’t know how to reconcile my multiple opinions. But I do know this: clowns are creepy and sweaty close up.

The kid in face paint, however, is super cute.