The Circus You Want to Forget

For small towns, the summer months bring the most excitement. This year there is a new circus rolling through town. All of the town folk are excited for this treat coming to their town. Flyers came out in the mail today showcasing this weekend’s kick off of the circus talking of clowns, acrobats, trained animals, trapeze acts, musicians, dancers, hoopers, tightrope walkers, jugglers, ventriloquists, unicyclists, magicians, etc. It is going to be something this town has never experienced before.

The RSVP list shows that all of the townies are signed up to attend this circus over the next week. For Billy, Dillon, and Tommy, they are excited to be able to attend their first event on their own and looking forward to the rides at the circus. The boys start planning their adventurous weekend of how they’re going to ride all the rides and see all of the shows. Dillon was most intrigued by the magic show going to take place, Tommy by the unicyclists, and Billy for the trained animals. While they are planning their boys’ night out, their families are also making them meet up at the end as part of a family outing.

Saturday night came and the boys rode their bikes to the circus. They didn’t waste any time getting in line for the activities they picked out. The started with the game where you blow up balloons with water guns to see who could get theirs to pop the fastest. Tommy had that in the bag. They moved right along to ring toss to win the big prize for the most rings around the pin. Dillon had a few tricks up his sleeve for this one. Of course corn dogs and snow cones were a must to have a true circus experience with circus foods. Lastly they went to the dart stand to throw darts, and Billy sure had the better aim.

Before meeting up with their families they decided to do one more activity together, the fun house mirrors. While in the fun house they over heard a family talking about the magic show they just seen and how the magician did everything from pulling rabbits out of a hat, making things disappear, hypnosis, to cutting someone in half. The boys decided they were going to have to come back another night and see this magic show. Dillon pointed out that his family was seeing it tonight, but if it was good he’d be good with coming to see it again with his friends. By this time they finished the fun house it was time to meet up with their facilities to enjoy family fun time.

Tommy and his family checked out the unicyclists. This was a team of professional trained unicyclists. They cycled around in circles, did flips, cycled on fixed rope, juggled while on the cycle, and more. Tommy recently got into doing bike tricks and he watched how they balanced and how muscular they had to be in order to be able to control the bike.

Billy and his family checked out the trained animals. Billy recently decided he wanted to be a vet and trainer. They watched as they got tigers to jump through hoops, baby elephants to balance on a ball, monkeys doing different commands. They were even able to train birds to fly across the tent and stop at different points. He was able to pick up how the commands and rewards happened to keep these animals working for a prize.

Dillon and his family went to see the magician. He had started to get into magic by the simple magic tricks like “pick a card” etc. He wanted to find the magician after the show to get his secrets. Sadly, a magician never reveals his secrets. The show consisted of him magically pulling rabbits out of his top hat, making different items from the crowd disappear into thin air, hypnotizing folks from the town, and even sawing someone in half. He couldn’t’ believe his eyes!

The next day the boys met up to talk about their night and also plan a day to go back to do more of what they didn’t get to do. Dillon went on and on about the magic show and how his favorite part was the hypnosis. He talked about how the magician used soft tones, the sound of his voice, and a green light to hypnotize people. Next, Tommy talked about how he wanted to incorporate some of the unicycle tricks into his new biking stunts; while Billy went on about how the trained animals were so good at knowing and listening to the commands. They made a pact that they would go to each of these events together so that they could experience each of their favorite things together.

That week the boys noticed some town people were acting strange. They were dressed different, talking different, and even started to redecorate their houses different. By the upcoming weekend majority of the town’s people had developed these new habits. Even Dillon and his family was acting weird. It was like they were living back in the 60’s. The boys had kept to their plan and attended the trained animal show, the unicyclist act, and when it came time for the magic show Dillon insisted that Tommy and Billy invite their family and get them to come. He said it was super important that everyone see the show. Tommy and Billy were a little weirded out by Dillon that night. Ever since he started acting strange they had this bad feeling. After the unicyclist and trained animals, Tommy and Billy decided to go home as they say a side of Dillon they hadn’t seen before.

By the end of the next week, the entire town was acting strange and living in the 60’s. Even Billy and Tommy’s parents were now changing things around the house and changing out the wardrobe. Billy and Tommy started staying out in their treehouse to get away from the crazy. They started putting their minds together to figure out what was going on with their family and this crazy town. When it came down to it, they realized almost everybody had seen the magic show at the circus including their friend Dillon. They needed to get to the bottom of this so that they could go back to normal.

They went in to attend the magic show, but stayed hidden ducked down behind a row of seats. They tried to listen in on the show and what was going on. Towards the end when the magician got to the hypnosis part, the magician’s voice had changed, and they could see a green light bouncing off the walls. The magician spoke to the crowd and invited them to watch this green light up on the stage. They boys remained seated behind the seats, but they were able to hear what the magician spoke “In three days, you will be changed. You will be living from the 60’s sitcom Leave it to Beaver. You will change your jobs, what you eat, the activities you do, the conversations you have, the decorations in your house, and even your clothes. You will only resume to normal life when you see a green light and hear me say “Back to the Future.” Next thing they knew it was over and everyone was leaving.

When the show was over the boys ran out of there and back to their tree house. They weren’t really sure what just happened and if their whole lives as they know it would be over in 3 days. They dreaded the countdown, but finally the end of the third day came and nothing had changed. They woke up to the rest of the town being hypnotized into this crazy new reality of an old sitcom show. Days passed and the boys tried to fit in with their families and the town. They didn’t want to get caught not being “normal”.

Weeks went by and they were waiting for the town to go back to normal, but was afraid this would never happen. They had to pretend every day of their life. Soon after they started devising a plan on how to get their towns’ people back to their reality. They tried to jog the towns’ memory by playing old videos and sharing pictures, but they seemed to be un-phased by that.

They were laying a wake one night after thinking all hope is lost, when it dawned on Billy that the magician said they’d need to see a green light and hear him say the words “Back to the Future”. Now they had a whole new challenge. They needed to come up with a plan to get the town in front of the magician again and for him to say those words. The boys thought long and hard and eventually came up with the perfect scheme.

The boys reached out to the Circus to put on a big performance for the town’s annual celebration for becoming a town and requested another hypnosis performance by the magician. This year is the 75th year anniversary that the town was established. The circus did agree to their request. Step one - complete. They made flyers, posted in the newspaper, and even got the local news channel to broadcast the show. Second step - complete. With the magician agreeing to perform hypnosis again, they knew that the green light issue would solved as he’d use this during hypnosis. The boys also planned to string green lights all across town. They had blew their savings to buys all the green Christmas lights from the local stores. Now they just have to figure out how to get the magician to say those magical words.

The town’s anniversary just also happened to be on the weekend of a new release to the movie series Back to the Future. They are going to bring this up during the live audience portion and also spread this news around town.

The night of the Circus performance came, and everyone and their families were in attendance. The stadium was packed full, the town square was packed with the crowd standing shoulder to shoulder, and the drive-in movies and news stations were all streaming this event. The cyclists complete their skit, next came the acrobats, clowns, animals, ventriloquists, and finally the magician was taking the stage. As guessed, he had his green hypnosis light dangling on stage. The towns people could all see the light from the streaming videos and also all of the lights strung up over town. When he asked for a volunteer from the audience, the boys did not give him the chance to pick. They ran up on stage and acted ecstatic to be a chosen part of the show. The magician started to ask them questions about the show, their daily routines, and also what they were most excited for. This was their chance, they brought up the movie Back to the Future, and ask him if he had heard of it. He said no, and the boys pushed for him to say those words. They then started asking him questions, and if he was planning on seeing it, if he knew what it was about, if he was interested in the original movie….etc. Finally, he said “Man you boys must be really excited for this Back to the Future movie”. The boys glared at each other and waited for the towns people to react.

After a second, the towns people woke up from what seemed like a trance and in a confused state. Luckily they had remembered what occurred and events from the magic show that made them confused. The realization came so fast, they started to chase the magician and circus out of town. It took a few days for all the towns people to get their town back to normal. Nobody really knew what had happened. The boys were so relieved and caught Dillon up on all he had missed while being hypnotized. They were so happy to finally be back to normal.