Careful What You Wish For

Sitting in my aunt’s kitchen, I listened to her ticking off what she wanted to see or do before she died. A bucket list long before the movie made it fashionable.

My cousin Kit and I usually had a snack or two in my Aunt Betty’s kitchen most Saturdays. She usually allowed us to eat things my mother wouldn’t.

This Saturday she was engaged in an animated phone conversation with someone about what she wanted to accomplish and experience in the years ahead. It was quite a list: finish college, travel, own a Cadillac, move to Vermont — things like that.

She knew my cousin, and I were listening to her side of her conversation.

As Aunt Betty was talking: Kit and I were eating; Wiggles, the family dog sauntered into the kitchen and over to his water bowl.

Betty glanced at him and, without missing a beat, flashing a quick smile at us said as the next item on her bucket list:

See a flea circus

I looked at Kit: he looked at me; mutually widening of eyes in the wonder of this incredible discovery. You can have your fire, your wheel, your gravity, and agriculture.

Flea Circus?

When Betty got off the phone, she could talk forever, we asked her if there was any such thing as a flea circus. She assured us there was. Otherwise, why would she want to see one?

A reward of another smile.

Still skeptical; Kit and I ran across the street to my house. We wanted to check the whole thing out in my brother’s World Book Encyclopedia. First time I really had any desire to use it.

Sure enough, flea circus was in there. About a paragraph of stuff. Not a lot. We still had questions, but at least we were now sure that such a thing existed.

Through out the year, we insert our new knowledge into as many conversations as we thought would interest (impress) the other kids. Almost everybody wasn’t as interested as we seemed to be.

Imagine little tiny fleas: taming lions, swinging on the trapeze, lifting barbells, juggling those bowling pin like things, imagine!

Just being aware that a flea circus was on this earth spurred on my juvenile pursuit of knowing things.

That couldn’t be bad?

It was, however, on top of the list of things I wanted to do. I realized, unfortunately, flea circuses probably won’t ever visit Oakhurst, New Jersey.

I was resigned to just knowing something cool exists that I’d never see. As inaccessible to me as — Mars.

Until:

My friend Dean Furgeson approached me on the school playground at recess. He had shown a modest interest in my flea circus information last year. He almost believed me when I told him about it.

“Hey, Brian, they’re having a flea circus on Ripley’s Believe It Or Not — SUNDAY,” Dean excitedly informed me.

He was happy to bring the news affirming that I may not have been bullshitting him last year. He was like most kids with neat things like a flea circus; he wanted to believe there was such a thing.

Robert Ripley was an unusual American born in 1890. He was a cartoonist and amateur anthropologist who is known for creating the Ripley’s Believe It or Not newspaper panel series, television show, and radio show which featured odd facts and activities from all over the world. The company is now involved in moving theaters, mirror mazes, aquariums, wax figures in addition to the 28 museums, which seem to be a Ripley specialty. All told the Ripley company has over 100 attractions in 11 countries.

In 1949 he was the host of his own television show on NBC Sunday night. It was a popular endeavor cut short by Mr. Ripley’s heart attack and death in 1950.*

Kit and I regularly watched the show but wouldn’t have the long-term planning ability to know what would be shown the next week.

The information was exhilarating. Like eating a carton of Twinkies.

On Sunday, we all gathered in Kit’s living room. Kit’s parents had the first television on the block. It was a black and white, round, 12-inch screen Zenith.

Kit and I tried to get as close to the screen as possible. Our parents consistently telling us to move back. Some vague thing about ruining your eyes.

How are you going to see the fleas if you don’t get close?

Kit and I were just short of — wild.

The flea circus came on and it wasn’t a complete disappointment. Probably a black and white,12 inch, round-screen television wasn’t the best way to view a flea circus.

Retrospectively, I think the idea of a fleas circus was greater than the circus could ever be.

Life is like that in lots of ways, I guess.

Now, a grandfather myself, I can honestly say the one brief glimpse of the flea circus was enough to satisfy me for a lifetime.

If asked, I wouldn’t recommend it being on anyone’s bucket list.

If you’re still interested, however, here are some facts about flea circuses that may last you a lifetime:

1. The first recorded performance was in 1578 when a Swiss watchmaker who had his trained fleas pull his miniature watch parts to show how small and light they were.

2. There are over 2000 species of fleas. The average flea lives only a couple of days without a host.

3. Tiny harnesses are sometimes tied around a flea’s neck for the life of the flea. Another procedure is to glue a thin wire to the flea’s bottom.

4. Fleas have powerful legs and can pull many times their weight when hooked up to a circus carriage. They stay attached to the wagon for life.

5. Often the fleas are glued to a metal base with balls or small instruments glued next to them. When the base is heated, the fleas jump and it appears they are playing with the instrument or ball.

6. There are flea circuses that stimulate the fleas to action by electric, magnetic or mechanical devices.

7. Flea circuses are most popular in the UK and Germany.

8. Fleas circuses are diminishing in number. Not because of lack of interest nor any animal/insect rights protests, but because of lack of performers.

9. Disillusioning: the fleas that are traditionally used by circus performers are human fleas. They are bigger and stronger than the fleas that you find on your cat or dog. Humans are cleaning up their act worldwide. Human fleas have become much harder to find in order to employ in circuses.

10. Most disillusioning: fleas cannot be trained.**

But then you knew that — -didn’t you?

*britannica.com

**BBC.co.uk