Stories You Won’t Forget

THE CIRCUS

When I grew up in the early 1950’s I was like most of the other kids I knew. My father was a pastor and mom stayed home to take care of us. We had very little money-just enough to pay the bills, and certainly no extra money to spend on entertainment. I know there were times when my parents would have liked to be able to do more for us but they just didn’t have the money. But one day, after my father read in his paper about the circus coming to town, he decided he would somehow find the means to take my sister and me to see the show.

“Come on kids,” my father excitedly exclaimed as he came into our bedroom one Saturday morning. “Today is going to be a special day. We are going to the circus.”

My sister and I jumped up out of our beds and hurried to get ready. We of course had heard about and seen circuses on television and couldn’t believe that we were actually going to get to go to one-live! We knew that this was going to be one day we would never forget. This did turn out to be true, but not in the way we had thought it would.

As our dad drove us to the outskirts of town my sister and I were bubbling over with excitement and anticipation of all that we would experience that day. There would be clowns, acrobats, and of course animals. I couldn’t wait to see real live lions and tigers. My sister was really looking forward to seeing the trapeze artists way above us.

After what seemed like forever we parked on the dirt field and walked to the front gate to buy the tickets. There was a long line but it moved quickly. In front of us was a man who had his three young children. They seemed even more excited than us as they laughed and jumped around. I could see even at my age how proud their father was to be able to bring such pleasure into his children’s lives. He finally got to the ticket window and happily told the ticket seller that he needed tickets for one adult and three children. He gave the lady a coupon that he had cut out of the newspaper. “Here you are, madam. This coupon is good for free admission for my children.”

“I’m so sorry,” replied the older woman who sold the tickets. “This coupon is good for only one child. You still owe me four dollars more for the other two children.”

A look of panic swept across the father’s face. This had caught him by complete surprise. “Please, let me see that coupon.” The lady seemed annoyed that he would actually question her about this.

“There you are, sir. You can see down at the bottom of the coupon that it clearly says good for only one child with a paying adult.” She of course was right and he now noticed what he had overlooked before. What was he to do? He looked down at his kids-they had no idea that they might actually not get to go in. You could see on his face that he was at a total loss as to what to do. He simply did not have the additional four dollars.

Just then I noticed that my father reached into his pocket and did a very strange thing. He threw a five dollar bill on the ground in front of himself.

“Excuse me, sir,” he said to the father in front of us. “When you took out your money you dropped this bill on the ground. Here, this is yours.”

At first the man began to deny that he had dropped the bill, but then he caught on to what my father was doing. And as he bent down to pick up the money I’ll never forget the look on his face. It was such a look of gratitude and relief at the same time.

“Thank you so much, sir,” he said with a voice so choked up with emotion. “Here you are, madam. Come on kids, let’s go in.”

My father then escorted us out of the line and we started to walk back to the car.

“Hey, where are we going?” my sister surprisingly asked. “Why aren’t we going inside to see the circus?” she questioned.

My father couldn’t answer her at that time, but I was older and I knew what was going on. As we got into the back seat and rode home my sister and I didn’t say a word. She was stunned and so disappointed. I just looked up at my dad and couldn’t help but notice the tears in his eyes. At that point I never felt prouder to be his son. He had been right. I never will forget that day.