Abnormal school

I resent my mother for not smoking crack when she was knocked up with me. If she had, maybe I’d have been born with 16 fingers or a twin attached to my face. But the selfish monster chose to take prenatal vitamins instead, and now I’m stuck with a body devoid of the oddities folks would step right up to behold. Lucky for me and other carny wanna-bes of average size and hairiness, it’s possible to learn how to become a freak at Coney Island Sideshow School, where normal people become abnormal through the teachings of Coney Island chairmanTodd Robbins, a lightbulb-eating, fire-breathing postmodern master of the sideshow and a fixture of Sideshows by the Seashore for more than a decade. In five to six sessions, he teaches students how to swallow swords, eat and breathe fire, hammer nails into their noses and other wacky acts that would make for a really entertaining death.

After registering for the weeklong course, coughing up $600 and signing an agreement that indemnified Coney Island should I set my face on fire, I ran away and joined the circus school. I arrived the first day to meet four classmates, ranging in age from 21 to 58 and traveling from as far as California. There was Faith, a massage therapist; Pat, a recent college grad; Julia, an artist; Julius, a clown-slash–swimming instructor; and me. We were five nerdishly obsessed misfits who strove to be freaks.

Professor Robbins wasted no time in making our teeth chatter, starting off with a lesson in fire-eating. “Put the torch in your mouth and close your lips around it,” he directed. “The lack of oxygen will extinguish the flame. Whatever you do, don’t inhale. ’Cause that’ll kill ya.” He demonstrated the move with ease and passed the burning baton to me. As it turned out, my body’s natural reaction to a six-inch flame coming at it was to dodge it, but after four attempts, I was able to shove the fire into my mouth and clamp down, igniting a rush of invincibility. If I could eat fire, I could do anything! With my confidence ablaze, I whizzed through the lessons: walking on broken glass, lying on a bed of nails, escaping from a straitjacket and dancing with a 15-foot albino Burmese python. I was able to stick my hand in an animal trap, a nail in my nose and a wire hanger down my throat (in preparation for sword swallowing)—and there was no stopping my foreign-objects-in-orifices rampage, because I had officially become a weirdo. And by the week’s end, I had the diploma to prove it.

Although my résumé lists my B.S. (bachelor of sideshow) degree from Coney Island U., I haven’t been as proactive with my skills as my fellow classmates have. Pat does street performances in Oakland, Faith started her own sideshow, and now that Julius can walk on broken glass, he’s a big hit at kids’ birthday parties. But I have used them socially. Now at parties, instead of being that dork who just spilled beer all over herself and fell down a flight of stairs, I’m “that freak who just stuck a nail in her nose.”

For more, go to coneyisland.com/sideshow_school.shtml.