𝖈𝖎𝖗𝖈𝖚𝖘 𝖆𝖈𝖙

6

CHAPTER 6

OUR FIRST DESTINATION WAS DINNER. Thank goodness, I barely ate anything earlier to have room for whatever he had in store. As long as it didn't have any meat...

"Don't worry, where we're going has plenty of vegetarian options besides salads," he looked down at me, reading my mind. I smiled in gratitude. Him remembering made me so relieved, it was going to be really awkward if he didn't.

It's happened on previous dates. California was Veganville, but nonmembers were inconsiderate. Not only would they pick a place where I could only have salads or fries, but they also thought they could kiss me after they just had a burger.

Things were going well so far. I was still nervous as hell. We were in a cab on the way to the restaurant, and car rides could get awkward really quickly. We had a good conversation the first day we met, but I didn't want to do too much talking - we were about to be stuck at a dinner table. And lots of walking. When should we start talking?

"How did you get into circus life? I never hear about stuff like that." Now, I guess.

"It all started because I was afraid of heights..." I dive into my origin story.

Heights were never my thing. I avoided roller coasters, monkey bars, swings and slides like the plague.

I'd been cheering competitively since I was about 4 years old. It was good and fun and all, until my coaches wanted me to be a flyer.

I refused to let any of my teammates pick me up the first day of training, even at about 4 ft tall being held up and tossed by other 4 ft tall kids felt like I was about to jump off of a multiple story building to my death. That practice was terrible, and probably one of the reasons my teammates began to not like me.

Coach talked about it to my parents, she begged them to do something to help fix this fear of mine. If not for the sake of kiddie cheer, for later on in life.

Luckily, my parents knew Jen, the wife of a coworker that was an aerialist. Silks, the hoop, the trapeze. They reached out to her, and she said of course. People often went to her gym to relieve their fear of heights as well.

It took lots of convincing, crying, and promises that Miss Jen wouldn't let go of my torso to get me to hold on to the handlebar. "It's basically a moving monkey bar," she grinned. I cried immediately, monkey bars already weren't supposed to move.

I finally got on, screamed bloody murder for the first 5 minutes, but eventually calmed down after feeling the air whoosh by as I swung back and forth. It felt better than I feared.

After a couple more meetings with Miss Jen, I was much more ready to fly up in the air by my teammates. But it wasn't the same.

Over the years of cheering, I was still enamored with aerial stunts. Once I was old enough to go on the internet, I was binging Cirque de Soleil performances, and even finding other performances that Miss Jen was in.