I always wanted to be . . .

When I was little, I wanted to be a cowboy.  But even when I was little, I knew that the kind of cowboy I wanted to be wasn't hiring anymore.   Then, I wanted to be a priest,but that kind of faded over the years.

In the year after I got out of the Navy, I traveled back and forth between Connecticut and California several times, finally ending up in Connecticut and getting a job in the West Haven Veteran's Administration Hospital.  I remember that my first paycheck came exactly two weeks after my last unemployment check.

I was a nursing assistant.  It wasn't that I'd always wanted to be a nursing assistant, or even that I wanted to be one then.  It was that I had been a Hospital Corpsman in the Navy, and I already knew how to be a nursing assistant.  After being a corpsman, it really wasn't that difficult . . .

I had a job!  I had money (such as it was)!  So, to celebrate, I took my god-daughter to the circus.  It was November, 1972.  She was four (she was born while I was at LaSalette in Altamont.  Her mom was Shush's step daughter (her name is Maureen, and she's about as Irish as you can get and still be American).  We rode the bus to the New Haven Coliseum because I didn't have  a car.  It was the Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Combined Shows Inc. Blue Unit.  This is a picture of the program . . .

That's as big as I can make it and still have it fit.  But it was way bigger for me.  I had never seen anything like  the Greatest Show on Earth.  Never.  And that's what it was.  No matter where you looked, there was something astounding going on!  There was a clown who reminded me of Bob Dylan.  At one point, he was walking in a line of clowns on the ring curb, and he made eye contact with me.The other clowns stopped, and he crashed into them and did a fall.  Seems like such a little thing now.

But it got me to thinking.  For the rest of the show, I watched the clowns, and it occurred to me that there wasn't one of them doing anything I didn't think I wouldn't be able to learn . . .

When intermission came, I remembered that I was with Maureen.  And she was gone.  Fortunately, I found her almost immediately.  She was following the toy butcher because something caught her eye, which, I of course, guiltily bought.  We went to the circus annually for a few years after that, and each time it became more special for me.  We about froze to death on the bus on the way home. 

Something in me changed that night.  I think it was because a dream was born . . .