Circus Girls

I do realize there are more important things happening in the world and at least six pressing tasks I should be tending to right now, but it was so much fun writing about that old photograph from 1957 the other day, I thought I'd fast forward to ten years later and revisit a moment in 1967.

From left to right, that's Joanne, Linda, me, and Louise, and we are standing at the Long Island Railroad stop in Central Islip. It was a still-chilly morning in April, and the four of us, defying our reputation as goody-good girls and honor students, have decided to play hooky and go to the circus at Madison Square Garden. (We apparently had the full blessing of Linda's mom, who took that snapshot and waved good-bye to us as we boarded the train.)

Clearly in the spirit of things, I am proudly displaying my circus ticket, which I seem to have viewed as the entry pass to a grand and giddy adventure, especially delicious on a school day. Someone should have told me that a khaki, army-issue raincoat from the surplus store was not appropriate attire, but then again, I seem to have also forgotten my gloves, head band, white shoes, and pastel-colored handbag. Forty-five years after the fact, I wish I looked more fashionable, but this is the reality of me...even now, more thrown together than arranged.

And I remember far less about the actual circus than the train ride that preceded and followed it. The circus: ringmaster in a tall hat, trapeze artists, silly clowns and sad elephants...and vendors selling cotton candy and cheap toys and tiny red flashlights. From our seats way up high in the bleachers, we could see the audience on the other side making circles in the dark by rotating their red lights, and that appealed to me, but instead we all bought souvenir toy monkeys. I immediately dubbed mine Grape the Ape, and eventually he would find a home dangling from the mirror of my boyfriend's VW beetle until one day he disappeared...Grape, that is, not the boyfriend...kidnapped, I always said, never to be seen again.

But maybe Grape's disappearance was just karma anyway. Allow me to explain. First, picture us boarding the train at Penn Station after the circus, carrying our monkeys -- and daffodils too -- giggling and goofing around, four ridiculous high school girls who should have been in school. In the same car, a little girl sat next to her mother, crying. Seasoned big sister that I was, I amused and distracted her with toy monkey antics, then grew bored and turned back to the chatter of my friends, which was probably only marginally more sophisticated. I could tell, however, that the poor sad little girl wanted a monkey of her own.

Oh, she wanted one so much. How magnanimous it would have been had I simply handed her Grape and told her to keep him. She would have gone home happy and never forgotten that people can be generous. Maybe it would have changed her life in some way; maybe she would be remembering it forty-five years later, just as I am now remembering that I was not so noble.

Anyway, Grape would eventually be kidnapped from the car, and all of us would graduate and move on and get old and one day even reconnect on Facebook. But the moral of this story, if it has one, is that you might forget the ordinary routines of life...but you always remember the time you played hooky.

Oh, and one more thing: err on the side of kindness. If you have a toy monkey, give it away.