"THE LIZARD AT THE CIRCUS" - ACT II

Act 2

As I mentioned before, I’m completely fascinated with the human world. I love spend hours observing their behavior and the world they live in. Naturally, I moved from one giant square box they call “building” to another to enrich my knowledge of the humans.

What I’ve seen was nothing less than exciting, albeit sometimes scary. Most times, the humans were sitting in their seats working on something. It was interesting to watch in the beginning, but after a while it got boring, since the humans were either looking at the screens in front of them, or talking on the phone.

On one faithful day, I came across a very exciting building. It was unlike other buildings I’ve been to. The walls were painted with so many different colors and pictures. The shape of the building was also not square like most building, but rather cylindrical with a pointy top. It had a big word “Circus” in front of the building.

This was the building that would change my life forever, but I didn’t know about that at that time.

I had no expectation when I approached the building. What I saw inside was mind-blowing. I saw a lot of humans doing various unique things that other humans don’t normally do. Of course, I found this more interesting than usual, as I definitely wanted to be able to do things that only a few humans can do.

In one corner, I saw a strong guy lifting a metal stick with 2 big balls of weights on either side. In spite of the big amount of weights, he lifted it as if it were nothing. Very impressive!! However, I thought to myself, being a tiny lizard, I wouldn’t be able to do that. So I kept walking and looked for something else.

As I continued walking, I saw a group of small girls doing very weird things. They could fold their body in ANY directions; backward, forward, sideways – as if they were made of rubber. Incredible! I started to imitate them, but soon enough I found out that the combination of small feet and an unproportionally large body wouldn’t allow me to twist my body as much as I wanted to.

The next thing I saw hit me in the head. BINGO! I saw a group of young men trying their best to balance and even walk on a rope. I thought to myself, I spent walking up and down on narrow passages in human’s attic all the time, surely I could do that! So, I continued observing what those guys were up to.

They raised the rope pretty high up in the air, and set a net underneath them. Slowly, they climbed up the pole holding the rope, prepared themselves, and started walking on the rope. At first they kept failing, but after a while they managed to balance, and started getting better at it. Wow, those guys were good!

For days I kept coming back to this building, particularly to the same spot to observe the guys rope walking. I also noticed that they used a long stick to help the balance. One day, after those guys finished practicing, quietly I approached the site, as I wanted to know more about the equipment. It turned out that they used a special rope to do their stunts. It was not just regular rope; as it was thick and heavy. I thought to myself, this was basically what I needed to practice; a rope that was sturdy enough to withhold my weight. It didn’t have to be the same rope that those guys were using.

Luckily, I managed to find a piece of rope around that practice area. Slowly I dragged it across the room and brought it up to the roof area of that building. I found two poles there, and with my teeth, I tied the rope to either pole, making sure that the rope was tight. I had my practice ground! I was so happy.

Walking on rope is HARD!!! It was harder, if not more, than the first time I started trying to walk on 2 feet. I spent hours, days, weeks and months to practice that; using a small wooden stick at first; then finally I managed to walk forward and backward confidently. I was so excited! However, I started to itch for the big question “What’s Next?”

What’s next? I kept observing those rope-walking guys, to see what they were doing next. However, the things they do next were something hard for me to imitate, as they started working in group. Sometimes, 2 guys (or more) rope-walked, and they jumped over each other. Other times, they rope-walked and the other guy climbed on top of the first guy, etc. All those tricks were impossible for me, since I was all alone. So, I started to think what tricks I could do on my own.

I thought long and hard about the tricks. Then, I realized that being a four-legged creature should give me an advantage over two-legged like human; i.e. I have the ability to use all 4 of my legs. Besides, it should be easier for me to use my legs since they were naturally stickier to any surfaces compared to human’s legs. With those thoughts, I started to try to do cartwheels with my legs. It was unbelievably hard in the first instance, but hey, after a while (and a thousand falls), I managed to do it once. Wow, that’s cool! I kept trying and trying and finally, I could do it over and over again.

One trick down! After the cartwheels, next thing I tried was to do back and front flips. They were harder than cartwheel, as my torso was bigger than my legs. Then, I found out that if I distributed my weight and launched myself over (or back), it was actually easier to do front and back flips! Yes!!

Next, I moved on to do the tricks on a rope. Doing the tricks on a rope was much easier said than done, especially if you were a lizard. For a long while, I tried and tried without any successes. I almost gave up at this point in time. However, I kept telling myself that I couldn’t stop now. This is the key to a better life. With that, I managed to carry on practicing.

Finally, I managed a breakthrough. I did a lot of rethinking, and came to a conclusion that the reason I failed before was because I grabbed on the rope way too tight when I rope-walked. With that in mind, I tried to just “step” gently on the rope instead. After a while, I actually managed to do a cartwheel! Oh, such a happy day!

Before long, I became really good at this. I managed to do cartwheels, back and front flips on the rope even, something that those guys couldn’t even do. I was so proud of myself. Then the big question came back: WHAT’S NEXT?? I was thinking, hmmmm… time to impress the boss of those rope-walking guys and see if he’s willing to take me. I know I know, you may think I’m crazy, but hey, I’m better than those guys he manages!