Johnny was a young lad whose mind was stuck on puppies, fishing, baseball and teasing Jane, his little sister who lived to torment him. If Johnny didn't play the games she wanted to play she would make fun of him and ban him from her playhouse, pointing a wagging finger of superiority and haughty otherness. Johnny hated Jane and she hated him. They didn't see eye to eye on anything and Johnny had long ago decided that Jane was only good for harassing and teasing. Both gave no quarter to the other.

The freedom of the summertime filled Johnny's life with adventure, from sun up to sun down, with nary a thought of the wide world around him. School was a distant memory and he was going to make the best of it while the days were still long. The warm pie on the windowsill, kicking the tin can down the road and pulling Jane's pigtails were the things of a small boy's wonderment. But, the one thing, at the top of the list, that was even better than a birthday cake, even better than the Saturday matinee at the theater, and yes, even better than hitting that home run over the fence into the neighbor's window.

The circus was coming to town!

The big day had finally arrived. It was Saturday and the beam of sun shining through the window pulled him from his bed like a giant magnet. He didn't bother dressing because he had slept in his clothes the night before. He had no time to waste. He could already hear his favorite, the side show barker's voice booming in the distance. He ran down the hall, jumped down the staircase three steps at a time, and grabbed a piece of bacon from the kitchen table as he flew out the door barely waving to his mom as she just smiled and nodded a knowing goodbye. "See you tonight Johnny".

The huge empty lot where the circus stood was abuzz with people and excitement. Johnny reached into his pocket to make sure the money he had earned the week before by collecting empty pop bottles and refunding them at the local grocery store was still there. He was primed and ready as he approached the big gate. This was the best day of the summer.

Johnny wasted no time pulling his hard earned change from his pocket as he laid it down on the table. With ticket in hand he ran off towards the circus entrance about to burst with excitement. He open the gate and there it was! All of the best rides were there for his enjoyment, a huge ferris wheel, the scrambler, the gut buster, a giant roller coaster, it was enough to boggle a young boy's mind. He saw games of all varieties, the pump and dump, the monkey hammer, the ponzi scheme, and a game of chance called the stock market. He rode all the rides and played all the games, making sure he saved enough money for his favorite part of the circus, the side show.

The morning passed quickly. He had purposely kept an eye on his watch to make sure he had enough time to see all of the side show. Johnny had just enough money and just enough time so off he sprinted towards the side show tent running like a politician chasing a vote.

As he approached the side show the barker's shouts became louder and more shrill, inviting everyone into the big tent. Johnny was about to explode with excitement as he approached the man, money in hand.

Johnny stopped dead in his tracks as soon as he got close enough to see the side show barker. Never had he seen an orange man before. A man with orange skin on his face and white skin around his eyes like a racoon. His hair was yellow and wrapped around his head like a five foot long pompadour rug. He was a pompous and bombastic man. His flatulent like bloviations boomed over the whole circus as he pontificated upon his greatness. He boasted that he was all things to all people, and if you didn't believe him all you had to do was ask him, he'd tell you, and then some. His barker's suit was accessorized by an extra long and extra wide red necktie that accentuated his tiny hands. He told anyone who would listen about how he was cheated out of his old job as the circus ringmaster, vowing revenge as soon as he cheated his way back in. The barker had been accused of fomenting a rebellion among the circus clowns. He claimed he was innocent as he stayed outside the tent as the clowns ran wild inside. The circus management loathed him and the workers loved him.

But Johnny didn't care about any of that, all he wanted was to see the side shows. He paid the barker the money for his ticket, the barker tried to cheat him out of fifty cents but Johnny persisted and got it back. He decided that he didn't like this barker. Johnny learned a valuable lesson about life and trusting side show barkers and the words they speak. He learned to watch what they do and not what they say.

But that was all behind him now. Johnny had his ticket and he was off to see the side shows!

"How can a man have no brain", Johnny thought. The old frail Man with No Brain just stared off into the distance like nobody was home, squinty eyes, aviators and all. He walked around in short little baby steps with slightly bent knees, exactly like Johnny's little brother does when his diaper is full. He would suddenly get angry for no apparent reason and yelled at everyone like he was the boss, pumping his hands up and down like he was about ready to throw a fit. There were people there that pointed to where he needed to go and what he needed to do next, but he just yelled at them about things that he'd done and places he had been, and kept calling them Jack. He looked like he was about a hundred years old, maybe that's why he mumbled and slurred his words so much. Johnny never could figure out who Cornpop was either.

Johnny had never heard the language called gibberish before. He knew it was a language he was unfamiliar with because he couldn't understand what she was saying. Oh, he'd catch a word or two but none of it made any sense. Johnny couldn't decide whether it was his head spinning or if it was hers. The placard said she Speaks in Tongues. Johnny wondered if Speaks in Tongues meant that maybe she actually had more than one tongue. It sure sounded like it. The Lady that Speaks in Tongues also doubled as a sword swallower and quickly used her skills to work herself up into a position second only to The Man with No Brain. Because of that the vast majority of the circus workers and circus goers hoped and prayed that The Man with No Brain would not succumb to a Weekend at Bernie's.

Midway through the sideshow stood a large concession stand with a funny looking man that was dressed like an alien. The lights bounced off of his bald head blinding Johnny for a short second. This Concession Man talked with a funny accent and the suit he wore was even funnier, like something from that old TV show, Star Trek.

The funniest thing of all though, was the food he was hawking. It was bugs! Nothing but bugs! And he was insisting that everyone eat them. Now from time to time, Johnny had eaten night crawlers at the dismay of a squealing Jane, but there was no way he was going to eat those bugs no matter how many times Concession Man told him he was "going to be happy". Johnny ran from the concession stand like it was a futuristic dystopian nightmare.

It was a person joined at the torso with two heads. One head was blue, had long narrow ears and a horse-like face. It made a loud nasally braying sound. The other head was red, with huge leaf-like ears, and a long snake-like appendage extending from its face that produced the loudest trumpeting resonance that one could imagine. The two heads were constantly bickering back and forth and after every argument they would turn away from one another, hold their breath and refuse to speak. Johnny was reminded of himself and Jane. He thought "this was very strange." "How can one body have two heads, argue about everything incessantly, but still work together as though they were one?"

The fortune teller was horrible! It was a head, just a head with no body, on a table, and it talked. There was a placard in front that said MSNBC, whatever that stood for. The talking head had short hair but appeared to be a woman, she had facial ticks and twitches, her eyes rolled and blinked incessantly, her head bobbed up and down, and even Johnny in his young age could tell that almost everything she said was a lie as she told everyone what is and what will be. Johnny could only take a few minutes of this talking head and he had to move on.

Johnny throughout the course of the afternoon saw many wild and exotic exhibits. He saw a rotund man as large as the state of New Jersey, a bearded lady wearing stolen dresses, a smallish man of both mind and stature who had never met a war he didn't like, an Indian lady that was a belly dancer and was from some place called Carolina or some such, and a giant of a man that dressed funny and had a huge lump on his neck that almost looked like a second head.

That was it, Johnny had visited all of the exhibits except one. But this was no ordinary exhibit, he had never seen one like this before. The little sign above the door said The Secret Room. That's all it took to pique the interest of a little boy, if it's a secret then he must know what it is. He walked cautiously to the door opened the handle and was astounded by what he saw.

Click here to enter The Secret Room.

He quickly slammed the door shut. Never had he seen anything so scary yet so pathetic. It was like they all were acting busy yet they accomplished nothing. "What a ripoff and worthless clown show that was", Johnny thought to himself as he moved towards the exit.

As Johnny exited from The Secret Room he came upon an ice cream stand with a big sign out front, The Big Guy's I Scream Dream, was the name on the sign. Johnny ordered the biggest cone they had, loaded with rainbow ice cream and chocolate toy soldiers on top. "Yum", Johnny said as he gobbled up the little army nestled upon the globe of ice cream. The ice cream vendor who also looked exactly like the Man with No Brain, maybe he was a clone or a body double, reached down to Johnny, handing him a card and told him, "Here's a special treat we give out with every ice cream cone." The card had a picture of The Big Guy/The Man with no Brain on it and in big letters across the top, Vote for Me, and a small piece of foil on the bottom telling the lucky holder to Scratch and Sniff. Johnny anxiously used his fingernail to remove the foil and held it up to his nose, taking a big whiff. He then threw it on the ground in a disgusted manner. "I must have gotten a bad one, that smells just like my little brothers diaper. Yuck!" Johnny said as he pulled apart the canvas flaps and exited the side show's big tent.

As Johnny left the side show his mind was reeling from the vagaries of the world beyond his youthful experiences. He was thinking "maybe I should rethink that wanting to grow up thing."

Johnny had been to a lot of side shows in his young life, but he had never experienced one as strange as this one. It was like the world was turned upside down. Just then, Jane tapped him on his shoulder from behind. She had been close behind him throughout the side shows even though he hadn't seen her. Johnny could tell by the way she was acting that she felt the same way about the strange things they had just witnessed. She told him that she had ridden all of the same rides and played all of the same games that he had played and she told him about how weird and scary the side shows were. She looked especially timid as she told him about the Big Guy at the ice cream stand and how he tried to sniff her hair as he leaned down to hand her his card. "I ran away as fast as I could", Jane said sheepishly. It was at this point that Johnny and Jane decided to drop their mutual disdain for each other, if only for a little while.

The sun was sinking in the west and the light was quickly fading. Johnny blurted out, as he joined hands with Jane, "Wow, this grown up world is crazy, may we stay forever young" and together Johnny Q. Public and Jane Q. Public ran off towards home.