Once upon a time, there was a little boy named Jimmy. Now Jimmy lived in the smallest town around. This town was tiny.
How small was Jimmy's home town? Well, the exact size was up for debate. Partly due to the fact that nobody has ever left the town. Academics would point out that there is a direct relationship between the size of a town, and the number of people who actually leave it. The smaller the town, the fewer people that ever leave. Jimmy's town was so small that nobody could ever remember anybody ever leaving. Furthermore, there are no academics in Jimmy's town.
The town (it had no name - nobody ever called it anything but "town") was, as previously mentioned, miniscule. In fact, it was so small that the circus only came to town once every 30 years.
Now little Jimmy was 7 years old this summer. He looked forward to this summer, not unlike previous summers - with a youthful expectation that is not uncommon to seven year old boys. He would play with his friends, run and hoot and holler. He would catch bugs, and even eat a few. Dirt and mud would be his fast friends. Rabbits would be chased, Kool-Aid would be drunk (despite the previously mentioned diminutive size of the town, there was still Kool-Aid to drink) and the resulting mustaches would be worn with pride.
It was a summer day like many others. The blazing sun had just begun slowly making way for the western horizon, and the town sweltered. Looking for a way to beat the heat, Jimmy and his pals had sought refuge in the big muddy ditch. In a town this small, the entertainment value of mud was not overlooked like it might have been in larger towns. And mud, being part water, is cool, just ask any hippopotamus. Jimmy and his friends, though, were not content to just wallow like our hippopotamus. As usually happens in the big muddy ditch, wallowing turned to mud-slap-tag.
The game broke out like it usually did, when one of Jimmy's friends slapped him on the back of the head with a huge handful of mud. "TAG!! You're IT!!" shouted some unidentifiable mud covered urchin, and the game was on.
As the game picked up and hoots and shouts and splats rang in the air, a strange wind began to blow. Jimmy and his companions didn't know it, but that wind would ultimately change little Jimmy's life forever.
In the middle of another round of mud-slap-tag. The game had suddenly taken a bit of a turn for the worse. One of Jimmy's friends had begun using an un-approved and smelly mud-substitute. Perhaps that was why game lost steam and the muddy combatants stopped their yelling and hooting and slapping. Perhaps it was the strange wind, that transfixed the boys with a strange smell and odd feel. Or perhaps it was the strange yellow papers that the wind brought with it.
One of these papers danced and darted on the strange wind. It's erratic path was noticed by first one boy, then another, and then finally all. They watched as it twirled and looped above their heads. They stood transfixed, watching, pointing, waiting for it to fall. And suddenly it did. The wind that held it aloft didn't just die, it stopped completely, leaving behind a calm and stillness so thick that the boys held their breaths - still watching the strange piece of yellow paper. It wafted back and forth and came to rest in the midst of them all.
One by one the boys walked and shambled up to circle around it - the stillness only broken by the sound of mud sucking on shoes and bare feet. Jimmy reached down and picked it up - carefully, so as not to obscure the fancy writing across the top of the bright yellow page.
"Big Top" it said, and underneath that "100 Wonders From Far Away Lands" below that, in large, ornate letters, the single word...
"CIRCUS"
