Now that the circus, uh, wrestling has left town, it’s safe to let you in on a little secret.

It’s not real, you know.

It’s scripted. It’s acting in the vein of Jon Lovitz’s Master Thespian. It is so bad it’s funny, and it has millions of people laughing and following story lines deeper than “All My Children,” a popular TV soap opera.

We feel safe in telling you this because, as we mentioned, they have left town. There is no one left to come in and break this reporter’s legs. Because sometimes when a reporter questions a professional wrestler as to the validity of his, ahem, sport, the reporter is tied into knots by the wrestler, made to say “uncle” 10-15 times and deposited on his back on a concrete floor.

“How real was that?” the reporter is taunted.

Don’t need that.

Wrestling is an addiction. It is love and hate. It is good and evil. It can incite a riot.

Where else can one man have 15,000 screaming people cursing him, threatening him, inviting him to meet them outside in the parking lot, while the object of this scorn is perfectly safe?

What else could induce a wonderful 5-foot-2, 90-pound gentle Southern grandmother to jump up off her couch and scream –

“HE’S GOT A FOREIGN OBJECT IN HIS TRUNKS!”

Moments later, the television camera would focus in on the tag team’s manager. Due to this wonderfully lucky bit of timing, the TV audience would catch the manager in the act. They would see him supplying the other wrestler on the team with another foreign object.

The fans along the front row would scream for the referee to pay attention. Old ladies would shake their umbrellas at the manager who, reminiscent of Snidely Whiplash, would flash a devilish smile.

Working his way around the ring, down on the floor, the manager would catch the referee’s attention. The ref would order the manager back to his corner, and when the manager refused, the ref would come over to the edge of the ring and lean through the ropes, shouting orders at the manager.

Meanwhile, the manager’s two wrestlers were in the ring working over a helpless, good-guy wrestler with their foreign objects, prompting grandmother off the couch again –

“THEY’S DISTRACTING THE REFEREE.”

They’s? An educated, gentle Southern grandmother using the nonword they’s?

“Now, Inez,” the grandfather would say, looking up from his Modern Detective magazine. “Don’t get all worked up. Everybody knows it’s fake anyway. The Roller Derby is real.”

Yes. It’s true. The Roller Derby was real. Not only was it real but it had true heroes. It had the John Wayne of sports in Big Charley O’Connell and it had a heroine in the Blonde Bomber Joan Weston.

Big Charley O would skate that John Wayne gait of his over to his antagonist, usually an unfortunate soul named Bob Woodbury. Woodbury would take a wild swing and Charley O would grab him by the scruff of the neck, slam his head into the rail circling the track. Then, for good measure, Big Charley O would take off his black pivot man’s helmet and bash Woodbury over the head with it a few times for good measure.

Then, to the delight of the crowd, Big Charley O would skate off. John Wayne on wheels.

Now that was entertainment.

Wrestling was a simpler thing then. It was the same in the sense of heroes and villains. But wrestlers didn’t come flying out the rafters. The story lines didn’t involve stealing the wife of another wrestler. And they didn’t involve the president of a wrestling federation, in the middle of the ring, with a beautiful woman, ordering her to take off her clothes as the credits rolled to end the show.

And if you wanted to see the conclusion of whether she took her clothes off you only had to pay $29.95 to get the Superslambamrazorwirecagematchofthecentury VIII on Pay Per View.

Back in the old days some wrestlers had a sleeper hold. The new stuff just puts me to sleep.

Wonder if The Rock can smell what I’m writing.

Don Perryman can be reached at 990-8045, 1-800-310-8600 or at dperryman@bangordailynews.net.