I’ve never seen a circus sideshow except in movies. I’ve read about them in books. But not real ones. I get the idea however…freak shows, hairy ladies, congenital twins and the like for folks who lived constrained and tedious lives. There definitely was a market for idle curiosity in the plain beige existence of middle America.
Well, all that has changed. Television takes us around the world. Movies expand our awareness of cultures and places otherwise unseen. But there is one medium that somehow feels like the offspring of the circus sideshow – the internet, specifically Google. We don’t need to wait for the circus to come to town. It comes to us, fits in our hand and updates daily with short visual clips of worldwide phenomena. How enlightening and helpful to the ACDC syndrome in all of us. And if not exactly that, some of the visual slots if not sporadic and unrelated can actually be thought informational, although I would hate to take a test on what I had just spent a half hour perusing online.
The subjects run to: felling trees, catching fish, wild animals, daring stunts, jokes and cartoons, woodworking, gags and gaffs. The variety of themes far outreaches a circus sideshow. But it changes so often in such short intervals that somehow it can feel like you’re attending class with a clever and animated teacher: This is fun. That is interesting. Look at the food, the life style, the clothes.
It amounts to curiosity candy with a few news fillers to justify the side trip down novelty lane. The distraction on a hand-held device may be justified because of the scope—international awareness, do-it-yourself hints, fitness suggestions, recipes. Not to mention sports, jokes, and travelogues. An hour of online scanning can feel like a semester in a college class broken into fascinating bits rather than a three month long, in-depth research of a specific topic like marital customs in Elizabethan literature.
This breeze through new, ever changing topics is interesting, exciting and engaging with no research papers or tests to weigh it down. Think college light. Exposure and learning at the tap of an icon. Too bad there isn’t a way to get a degree in internet exposure.
Retired trainer, and writing instructor, Joe Novara lives in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Writings include novels, short stories, a memoir and various poems, plays, anthologies and articles. Read more at https://freefloatingstories.wordpress.com/
