I’m not sure the title above is the best way to express my feelings on this issue.
You see, earlier in my life, I used to be a clown at kids’ parties.
I didn’t really bring much to the table as a clown. My only clown-like abilities were juggling and making a small set of balloon animals.
After a couple of parties, I realized that little kids aren’t really impressed with juggling; they had no appreciation of the hours of practice that go into certain tricks. They assumed that if I could juggle three balls, then why not four. And then why not five, or six, and so on.
I also learned that blowing up balloons for animals is hard work, but I wasn’t going to stoop to buying a little pump to blow them up. So each balloon animal would take a significant amount of time, and while I was making a sword for one kid, I would lose complete control of all the other kids.
As you can see from the picture above, nobody is really paying attention to me. In hindsight, such a picture was a good predictor of what my life would be like as a college teacher. You can also see that I was a fan of digital watches…
One of the things I tried to accomplish as a clown was to try and get kids over their fear of clowns, and at this task I think I was successful. Perhaps the fact that I wore real glasses made me seem more like a harmless human than a scary freak. Notice in the picture below how I got down to eye level with one kid to make me seem more approachable.
My guess is that he was probably lodging some complaint about my inability to juggle twelve balls.
I never made any money as a clown at these parties, it was always just done for friends and family. My “stage” name was Quincy the Clown.
So now fast forward 20 years, and clowns have got a really bad name, thanks to the creepy clown craze that is popping up around the country.
Why would these people go and ruin such a noble and respected profession?
What’s next?
Creepy doctors?
Creepy policemen?
Creepy accountants? (well, creepier…)
So this is my plea to the creepy clowns.
Please stop what you are doing.
Us real clowns are already down to our last couple of ounces of dignity.
Long live Bozo!
Borden's Blather 