I’m quite sure that my dad always wanted a circus family.  He never actually said “Hey let’s go join the circus!”.  But he did teach us quite a few circus tricks.  I think it all started when he found a unicycle at a garage sale.  He taught himself how to ride it and ended up buying all us kids our own unicycles.  At one point, I think our family owned 6 unicycles.  I am the only one who has really kept up with it and I currently own 4 of them.  I don’t unicycle much but you might see me riding around my neighborhood every so often.  Once we all learned to unicycle, he taught us to juggle and he even built us a “Tarzan” swing.  Eventually, he built us all stilts.  We were quite the circus act though the only people who ever really saw us were our neighbors and of course my mom.

Well yesterday I found out that a movie was coming through town and they needed stilt walkers.  They would be paying $250/day plus a $54 per diem.  AND it would be up to 10 months worth of work!  I could definitely quit my job for that!  So… I hadn’t done any stilt walking since I was a kid but I knew that I had good balance and could probably pick it up again fairly quickly.  I rented some dry wall stilts from a local hardware store and was ready to take on the audition!!  Until I tried on the stilts that is.

Dry wall stilts just aren’t the same as the stilts you see clowns wearing at the circus.  They were rickety and felt quite unstable.  I could see myself tumbling straight onto my face and breaking my teeth (for some reason I am always afraid of breaking my teeth when involved in dangerous sports).  I never got comfortable on them and decided not to do the audition.  I was REALLY bummed.  I was so excited to see my credit on IMDb for stilt walking!  Oh well.  Hopefully the next movie that comes through will be in need of unicyclers.  Now that, I know I can do!

Photo by Myben.be