LEWISTON — It’s amazing, really.

Every year, the Shrine Circus comes to town with the same props, the same animals, the same red-nosed clowns. Every year, it’s the same thing and yet, somehow, wildly different.

At the 61st circus on Friday, a 6-year-old girl tried to wear various balloon animals as hats.

A small boy repeatedly poked his mother with a glowing plastic sword. She wanted to get mad at him, but she just couldn’t do it. It’s the circus, after all.

A woman grilled a Keystone cop, wanting answers to real-world, legal questions. A grandmother took photos of the clowns with an iPad instead of an old Kodak. The pirate had a Sharpie instead of a sword, and next to him, a tuxedoed man carried an inflatable Scooby Doo. Bug-eyed aliens, 5 feet tall, stared from a corner booth as the crowd grew larger.

The Androscoggin Bank Colisee began filling up Friday long before the show was underway. Every bit as important as the elephants and lions, trapeze artists and dog trainers is the span of time at the start of the show when kids get a chance to look around and photo opportunities are everywhere.

“Come on, Kracker,” a young girl demanded of a clown. “Get in the picture.”

This was 5-year-old Emily Young, a freckle-faced blonde with an event program in one hand, a balloon poodle in the other. Everywhere she turned, there was a camera pointed and she didn’t mind posing. Emily was not averse to a little banter, either.

“You,” she told RoBo, a different clown, “have big feet.”

A few feet away, a boy in a red sweatshirt and a ball cap had a sullen look on his face. His name was Tyler, and his parents tricked him.

“He thought he was coming to a hockey game,” said Carol Guay, the 8-year-old’s grandmother.

Tyler was a little miffed by the ruse, although he was starting to warm up a bit as he discovered more and more novelty everywhere he looked. A clown fashioned a balloon into what looked like either a hair dryer or a ray gun and handed it over.

“It’s a ray gun,” Tyler said. He was so emphatic on this, he said it again: “A ray gun.”

His mother, Michelle Curtis, wasn’t worried that Tyler would remain grumpy for long. There was no hockey in sight, but the show was about to start, and it would be good. Curtis knew this because she’s been coming to the circus all her life.

“As soon as the lions come out, he’ll be happy,” she said. “And the Bruins are on later, so he’ll be fine.”

Guay, the grandmother, seemed to be looking everywhere at once. All the familiar circus fixtures sparked a wave of nostalgia, yet what she noticed most was how much had changed. There used to be more clowns. There used to be three rings.

“It used to be that you could smell elephant poop everywhere you went,” Guay said.

Not that she was complaining, mind you. As she waited for the show to begin, she could recall every circus in her past, dating back to her earliest years.

“I love the circus,” she said. “I’ve always loved it.”

She had a feeling her grandson would learn to love it, too, but time will tell.

Shrine Circus at the Androscoggin Bank Colisee, Lewiston

Saturday, April 19, shows at 9:30 a.m., 2 p.m. and 7 p.m.