Looking back, part deux

A couple of weeks ago the circus was in town and my kids were pumped! They love the circus. They love it so much that their grandmother bought front row seats for everyone. It was sick, we were actually part of the show and everything. Crazy experience.

But that is not what I am writing about today, well not being in that circus. My wife jokingly made the statement that I was in a circus once so I had to tell the story.

One year when I was a young child, some crappy half ass circus came to my home town. My parents took my brother and I to go see it, which was great of them to do that but it just sparked a memory that still gives me nightmares. You see I am several years younger than my brother so I was more or less his entertainment until I was a little older.

After we got home from this festival of freaks my brother thought it was a good idea to play circus. What part of the circus you ask? No, not the lion tamers, although that would have been funny. Nope, not the high wire walkers. Not even the clowns. He wanted to be the acrobats. Yeah, the flying Sweezey brothers, or should I say brother, as in singular, as in one, as in me!

So acrobats fly through the air, and they need something to “launch” them. What do they use? They use a see saw. So we are of to make a see saw, against my will. Sadly all we can find is a 10 foot 2x12 and a cinder block. Oh darn, can’t make the see saw right? WRONG! We used the damn cinder block and 2x12. A CINDER BLOCK! As in a square! As in flat on four sides! As in this is going to hurt.

So the plan is I am going to stand on the board and he is going to jump on the other end propelling me skyward where I am instructed to do a back flip and land on my feet. You’re kidding me right? He was far from kidding. I ask him how come I have to be the one to do the back-flip. Wanna guess what the answer was? Yeah, “because I said so”.

So we set up what I like to call the cardiac arrest starter kit. Fortunately for me, the end I was not standing on was way too high in the air for my oh so loving brother to jump on. Dang, well we tried, right? Wrong. Now we are on a mission to find some sort of a platform for him to jump from. This is not looking good for the home team at all at this point.

So I hear him call for me and he says he has found something. Please god, let it be a bucket or something like that. Well it was something like that, sort of. He found a 55 gallon drum that my grandmother had. Do I at least get a final request?

So he rolls the barrel over to the area where the future caulk outline will be. And it is way taller than the end of the board, plenty of room for him to hit terminal velocity before I am hurled towards the clouds.

In a last ditch effort to try to keep all of my body parts as they should be I tell him that we are way to close to the concrete and that we should probably at least move the set up. He tells me that if I do it right I wont even come close to the concrete. No pressure there.

The zero hour has arrived and the Governor didn’t call with my stay of execution so I guess I have to face the music. There I am standing on this board which is laying over a cinder block with my older brother standing on the other end atop a 55 gallon drum ready to put my ass into orbit. I must have looked like Greg Louganis but I just remember seeing his feet leap off of the drum and then I just remember having a really bad head ache and my brother telling me “You didn’t do it right, get up and lets do it again”. I beleve that was the first time I ever told someone FUCK YOU!