CIRQUE du RABBIT HOP
by
Sharon Prater-Pope
It was the fifties. Ten year old Sharon sat on the front porch steps on a beautiful Saturday morning with no one to play with. She had no siblings and none of the neighborhood kids that she usually played with were at home.
She wasn't in the mood for the cartoons on television or reading. She sat her chocolate milk on the porch beside her as she pondered what she wanted to do.
She looked down at her blue and white wide striped pajamas and, for some reason, thought of a circus tent.
"I know!" she said to herself. "I'll put on a circus!"
Sharon did not lack in the imagination department.
She jumped up, ran into the house, and changed into her red and white bathing suit and red sneakers, which seemed appropriate for circus attire in her opinion. Her golden blonde, baby fine, hair was pulled up into a pony tail with a red bow, and she added a touch of her mama's red lipstick to her lips and checks for effect.
Now she was ready to begin!
Back outside with her beloved stuffed horse, Benny, she started assembling the circus in the front yard. People passing in their cars must have thought she was crazy, but that was okay. She liked playing with other kids, but she was equally good at entertaining herself, and she was about to have a blast! The kids would be sorry they missed it.
She sat Benny down on the walk for the time being, while she wrote the words "cirque du rabbit hop" (Rabbit Hop was the name of the community where she lived) on an old blue scarf with a black magic marker and added a little design work, hoping mama didn't notice any time soon.
She brought in her first horse from the sixties, whose name was "Old Pat", because Pat was already her name when daddy bought the mare, and she was an old gray mare. Old Pat was also very gentle and patient, and was already wearing a faded red halter. Now she was wearing a blue with gold fringed scarf on her back, and she didn't mind one bit.
Sharon gathered up her two imaginary friends, Madamojell, a southern belle, and Jessie Brown, a tomboy if there ever was one, along with an imaginary audience, full of very interesting characters, plus Benny, and ushered them to seats on the porch steps and along the porch edge.
The audience waited in anticipation as she started the music on her record player, which only played 45 speed records that had to be stacked on the spindle. Her uncle had raided an old jukebox and brought her the records.
The first song was "Davy Crockett", which played while she called in her Pekingese dog companion from the eighties, Kibbles Marie, and climbed up onto Old Pat's back, via a stump. Kibbles joined the audience for the time being.
Sharon rode Old Pat back and forth across the yard a couple of times, then stopped in front of the crowd, which got bigger by the minute, and pulling her legs up, she sat cross-legged and made large sweeping gestures with her arms. She was rewarded with clapping.
The crowd roared as she twisted around and lay on her stomach across Old Pat's back, holding her arms out, as her feet dangled off the other side. She followed this by laying flat on her back along Old Pat's back. She was not brave enough to stand all the way up, but she did get on her feet and do a squat, while holding on to Old Pat's mane.
She concluded her act by sliding off Old Pat's back onto the ground and crawling under her stomach to face the crowd, throwing her arms up and out in a victory stance. The crowd loved it!
Then Kibbles was called over to do her thing. Sharon noticed a squirrel sitting in the tree nearby watching intently while nibbling on a nut or something.
Kibbles wound around back and forth in and around Old Pat's feet a few times before Sharon lifted her onto Old Pat's back, where she stretched out on her side for a minute, walked on to Old Pat's rump and back, the laid down atop the scarf on Old Pat's back and posed for applause, which she got in abundance.
By this time "Good Golly Miss Molly" was playing on the record player and Sharon was getting bored, so she took a final bow to thunderous clapping and whistling and a standing ovation, before leading Old Pat and Kibbles back to the future, as the imaginary audience filed out and went home.
Madamojell and Jessie Brown assured her that the Rabbit Hop Circus had been a huge success and that she should put on another one soon. They went back to her imagination as she sat back down on the porch steps and thought about what to do next.
"What are you doing, Sharon? Why on earth are you wearing your bathing suit?" mama asked, as she noticed her sitting outside alone. She didn't notice the lipstick.
"Nothing. Just sitting here thinking." Sharon shrugged her shoulders and smiled to herself.
She could still hear the applause...
The End
PS-A portion of this story is written in the background, under the layers, on the final painting. Some of the story is fiction, some is fact, thus it is faction! The characters are real, and the names have not been changed to protect the innocent. :)
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