Gompers Phlebotowicz was astounded to learn that clown college was, in 
fact, much less fun than regular college. 

Egged on by the rhythmic nature of his real name, which no one ever 
believed was his real name, his friends had always told him he should be 
involved in the circus business. As a child, he had learned how to juggle 
and how to spin fire, but this became merely a side note on the ledger 
when he -- much to his parents' surprise -- managed to score an invite to 
the Princeton Class of 2006. Gompers, at Princeton, didn't distinguish 
himself either in a good or in a bad way, graduating with mediocre grades 
-- which in the inflated world of the Ivy League meant mostly A-minuses -- 
and without having done anything particularly notable for his obligatory 
senior thesis, a rather straightforward exegesis of the divergence of the 
British and American literary traditions.

And so, when he left Princeton, Gompers Phlebotowicz was excited to live 
out his dream. He had, in true Ivy League fashion, made some connections 
with an Eastern European traveling circus, and given his already existing 
skills, a place was guaranteed to him if he could master even the 
rudimentary basics of trapeze work. Gompers, of course, figured he could 
combine his mental dexterity with these skills to do intricate juggling 
patterns, which he had already worked out in his head, Mill's messes of 
flying balls and platforms permuting in his head.

Unfortunately, when Gompers arrived at clown college, he found that the 
classes, far from being high-flying acrobatic exhibitions, consisted 
mostly of safety training. On the rare occasion that they would get to 
touch the trapeze, people would go one at a time, doing the same thing 
over and over, no tricks,  just swinging back and forth. The hardest part, 
in fact, was not hitting one's head on the platform when one pendulumed 
back to it; Gompers had to concede that the safety training was, at least, 
relevant.

So Gompers sat there in clown college, waiting patiently for the time when 
he could use the trapeze by himself. The time never came -- it was, after 
all, necessary for an instructor to be in the room. Gompers executed his 
tricks with technical competence, but his heart wasn't in it; it was 
repetitive and hardly the creative space he had imagined from his 
experience juggling. He passed the final exam of the trapeze class, a 
recital where he had to do his rote thing in front of an audience of 
dubious hipster onlookers, without any trouble, but by this time Gompers 
was entirely unsure whether the circus was really all it was cracked up to 
be.

So Gompers Phlebotowicz forsook the Eastern European traveling circus in 
favor of  Madison Avenue, where another fortuitous connection made at 
Princeton was working for his father's firm. From then on, the Gompers 
Phlebotowicz story became the Sam Millstein story -- the Phlebotowicz 
name, after all, was not suited for Madison Avenue -- and it quickly grew 
to resemble its new protagonist in nature, descending quickly from 
newsworthy to blogworthy to irrelevant. Sam Millstein got married to a 
suitably intelligent, suitably beautiful 21st century trophy wife. Sam 
Millstein had two kids and eventually moved to Connecticut. Sam Millstein 
got old, retired, was a fairly cool father, and eventually passed on when 
his time was up. Gompers Phlebotowicz, by this time, was long gone.