~James Darren: Goodbye Cruel World ~
"I reached for her hand, and I fell to my death."
Sheer terror overcame me as I realized what was happening. Though I attempted to center my descent at 32 ft./per sec. per sec, I knew I was going to miss the safety net and hit the ground hard. When I did, I died instantly upon impact as spectators in the Big Top gasped in horror...
When my mother was a little girl, she was taken to see the Circus and fell through the slats of hastily built stands, to straw covered earth below her. Nana and Grandpa had to quickly exit the huge tent to seek where my mother-to-be landed. Fortunately for her and her parents, she was found quickly and then enjoyed the remainder of the show...
As I boy of ten, I visited my next-door neighbor Peter when he coaxed me to climb atop a wood shed to jump off it into a bale of hay. Upon looking down, I was so scared that I refused to take a leap, so I was a subject of ridicule for Peter and his sister Helen, who was slightly older than him...
Acrophobia had no place at such low heights, yet it followed me up through high school, especially the high-dive board for the school's Olympic-sized swimming pool. However, I retained a fascination for the Circus, especially trapeze artists flying through the air effortlessly. Later, as an adult with two small children of my own, my wife and I went to a regional furniture store that sported trapeze artists over the entrance doors who appeared to be doing acts just as daring...
Then, Pink performed a live rendition of her smash hit Sober from the album Funhouse, most of it aerial with a male trapeze artist working with her. When he reached for her hand, he didn't miss...
Circus fascination harks back to the time my family moved from Pasadena, below foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains, to a new housing development in Corona del Mar dubbed Cameo Highlands. On the other side of Pacific Coast Highway, kissed by the ocean, was Cameo Shores. While listening to the radio outside our new home, James Darren was singing over the airwaves, "Goodbye Cruel World (I'm off to join the Circus). That song hooked me in the recesses of my memory, as I visualized the Ringmaster taming lions and tigers, herding elephants, and directing the antics of clowns...
Never was there an inkling of my phobia regarding heights during my childhood, other than my fear of jumping off a shed roof with a next-door neighbor. This didn't surface until I viewed Pink performing her live version of Sober in a music video... ~ Joseph David Henry Ware Bryan-Royster
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