By: Aaron Troy Smith
When I was a teenage metalhead in the 1980s, I ran away (walked, actually, 2,150 miles from Georgia to Maine) from home and joined the circus. Two of them, actually: Ringling Brothers and the Big Apple. I lived on the train, which caught on fire in the middle of the night while rolling from town to town. An alligator escaped during a live show. An elephant tried to trunk me from a moving train. The adventures go on and on. Read all about them in Circus Jerks.