Taking Cooper to the Circus

Written by John Michalke 

My oldest daughter saw and advertisement in a local paper that the Detroit Shrine Circus was going to make its annual stop in Port Huron.  We agreed that it would be an inexpensive family outing that we could all enjoy.  My daughter did all the heavy-lifting and got us all tickets online, and in advance.  Having been to the Ringling Bros and Barnum and Bailey Circus in the past, we are circus-going veterans. 

We all enjoy it, but my grandson Cooper is particularly fascinated with the animals.

So, in April, we packed everybody up.  In three different cars, and coming from three different directions, we converged on McMorran Arena in Port Huron. 

Seats at this event are granted in a first-come, first-served basis.  So we managed to find ourselves in some prime seating, and all seven of us were in the same row.  Now, my grandson is a “lap-jumper”.  On these types of events, he never actually sits in his seat; choosing instead to go from lap-to-lap until he loses interest. Like any three-and-a-half year old, he rarely sits still for more than a few minutes at a time. 

He has no allegiance to anyone.  If you have popcorn, he’s “yours”.  If you have a pop, you have his attention as well as some “backwash” when he shares your drink.

And he is always welcome in my lap.  In fact, there is no place in the world I would rather have him than in my lap, with my arms around him, and my cheek against the side of his head.

We made it through to the intermission without any major incidents and Cooper got to go on a “meet-and-greet” with goats and llamas.  My daughter gave him a cellophane bag of cotton-candy which was dispatched in short order.

Just prior to the resumption of the show, I looked out of the corner of my eye, and I saw this seemingly toxic little kid covered in sugar residue headed towards me.  I made the suggestion that somebody needed to get him washed up.  Getting no takers, I said (somewhat sarcastically), that I could always take him to the bathroom and get him cleaned up.

I scooped him up and went down the stairs.  Fortunately, the men’s room was located right at the foot of a couple flights of stairs off the concourse. 

Now, for all intents-and-purposes, the men’s room appears to be completely empty.  We are at the point in the presentation, where intermission is almost over, and the circus is about to restart.   In short, this is the perfect time to use the restroom. 

I have been to McMorran Place twice in my life, both times were high school commencement ceremonies for my two daughters who each graduated from Anchor Bay High School. This building is probably about 50 years old. 

So, having been there twice before, and although I am not an architect, I am going to speculate that the last time the bathrooms were “updated” was never.  And the building is about 50 years old. 

I should probably preface this little story by saying that, over the years and of late, I have developed a rather unreasonable and irrational phobia to germs and an aversion to anything that I regard as unclean.  Public bathrooms are probably considered, by people like me, as the filthiest place on the third rock...But I digress.    

Cooper and I go into the bathroom and see that it is one large square room.  The wall to the right is lined with white porcelain sinks.  Along the back wall there are six or eight urinals, and perhaps six toilet stalls.

The bathrooms are equipped with these “mono” faucets.  One faucet for hot water and a separate fixture for cold.  They have a push button on the top to get the water to flow.  When you release the button, the water stops flowing, immediately.

In order to negotiate this “Cooper Cleaning” process, it required me to balance him on my one leg and raise my knee up.  I was essentially hopping around on one leg and trying to maintain my balance.  My left hand was wrapped around his waist, and with the free hand I am trying to operate the fixtures.  The faucets have two temperatures “tepid” (on the cold faucet) and “scalding” remove-all-the-skin-from-the-hands-of -children on the other faucet.

To complicate matters, there is a push button soap dispenser.  Well in order to remove the residue from cotton-candy, soap is not just an option, it is a necessity.  In the hilarity that followed, I rotated between hot, cold and soap repeatedly while Cooper squirmed on my lap.  Lather, rinse, rinse and rinse. And repeat.

After a solid two minutes, I finally get Cooper some semblance of clean.  I set him down and go about the process of cleaning my own hands.  I asked Cooper to stay put and I turned my attentions to negotiating the paper towel dispenser.

Now to a normal person, operating a paper towel dispenser with a hand crank is a routine process.  I however am troubled with the “just washed” hands and now the necessity to touch the filthy hand crank.

When faced with this dilemma, my solution is to un-crank a healthy length of paper towel.  I then returned to the sink and soap.  I rewashed my hands and then retrieve the paper towel which is now already dispensed and hanging in-place.

I must admit, I have been thwarted in the process before where I have been in busy bathrooms and I went through my procedure, only to have a complete stranger beat me to the unrolled paper towel, after I dispensed it, but before I had a chance to retrieve it.

The lucky S.O.B. walks up, tears off the towel and walks out feeling quite proud.  Jackpot. 

Leaving me to repeat the whole process.

Another dilemma is how to exit the bathroom without touching the dirty bathroom door handle with my just-washed hands.  Because bathroom doors open in, this poses complications.  With paper towels, I can retain my paper towel until I wrap it around the handle to open the door.  This is the preferred method.  It is a bonus if there is a trash can behind the door.

I can dry my hands, use the paper towel to open the door and then toss the used paper towel into the trash in the same motion.  Smooth.

Although troublesome, I have a contingency in those bathrooms where there are only the electric hand-dryers on the wall.  My solution: wash my hands, dry them, linger at the hand dryer until such time as someone else opens the door and then quickly bolt through the already opened door.

This process works very well when you are in a busier bathroom.  In a less busy bathroom, I can be left standing in there.  This is just weird.

So, as I am going through the process of drying off my hands and with my peripheral vision, I can see Cooper is across the bathroom.  In that we are alone, I am not overly concerned and we are talking the whole time.  Mostly about elephant poop.

Anyway, having conquered my own problems, I focus my attentions to Cooper and the drying of his hands.

I turn and see that he is standing in front of a urinal.  I find this quite disconcerting, to-say-the-least.  I immediately ask him to get away from there, those things are filthy. 

My grandson has an uncanny knack of finding the filthiest things in any particular place that we are at, at any given time.  No wait, he had found the most filthy thing in not just a building, but in a building that is having a circus.

Having received no cooperation from him after my first request to get away from the urinal, I look back to see that he is now reaching into a urinal.  Now, more insistent and with much greater urgency, I put my hands on my hips and say: COOPER MICHAEL.

He turns and starts to walk towards me.  To my utter disbelief, he is carrying not one, but two blue urinal cakes, one in each hand.

I look at him and he is absolutely joyful at his finding.  Who wouldn’t be? They are bright blue, and they are apparently free!

And they are all over the place. 

Okay, this is repulsive on so many levels that I can’t even relate.

I am beyond mortified and I think I somewhat blacked out.  My blood pressure immediately ratcheted up ten-fold. 

PUT IT DOWN! PUT THEM DOWN NOW! OH MY GOD, DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA HOW FILTHY THOSE ARE?

I realize that I am now screaming at the poor kid, and he is completely confused.  He looks up at me, and I can see his lower lip is now quivering and he is about to burst into tears.     

It was at this point that I heard a slow muffled chuckle coming from behind a toilet stall.  Well, it started out as a chuckle but it quickly evolved into an outright laugh.  I looked over to see a pair of work-boots poking out from underneath one of the stalls.  The eavesdropper had a huge red-neck laugh at my expense.

I never yell at Cooper.  There is nothing that this child could ever do that would make me mad. Ever. So, needless to say, I was so sorry that I gave him the impression that he had disappointed me.

I scooped him up and assured him that it was okay.  I quickly rewashed his hands and rushed him out of the bathroom.  As the bathroom door was closing, I could hear the other guy in the stall, still laughing.

Cooper and I re-enter the arena just as the lights were dimming signaling the beginning of the second half of the show.

I carried my grandson up the short flight of stairs and sat back into to my seat.  I plopped down and pulled him back into my lap. 

It dawned on me later that Cooper had probably never seen a urinal before.  That most of his trips to the bathroom are with his mother, and not into restrooms in huge arenas.

My daughter leaned forward to acknowledge our return.  Like any mother, she is always conscious of where her son is at any given time.  I am sure she is uneasy when he is out of her sight.

She looked at me as if to say, “Is everything okay?"

My grandson nestled his head against my chest.  I thought to myself:

Everything is perfect.

John Michalke is a life-long resident of Macomb County.  He and his family have lived in New Baltimore for the last 20 years.