My life as a clown. Or: Make 'em laugh, make 'em laugh, make 'em laugh.

Actual unretouched image of my father.

Most people, when they graduate high school, pursue further schooling at colleges, or trade schools. And then they go on to mostly unhappy careers doing jobs they would rather not be doing and they serve their time and then they are paroled for ten years or so and then they die. No one told me how this works when I was young or I would have run away the first time a carnival rolled through my town. At least these people seemed to know that life was all about having fun. This was before I understood that carnival people are the scariest people on Earth, and to live with them was a step away from a padded room.

There are, of course, no hard and fast rules about finding a new career, or being happy. Some people are perfectly content to do jobs that give them ulcers, heart attacks, and too many unhappy marriages. We all went into this with our eyes wide open; we just were maybe hoping for something a little more fun to do with our lives. The lucky few figure this out way earlier and they only do the things that make them happy. These are the people we should be voting for, not the unhappy double-talking politicians. A clown would make a wonderful president. Imagine the big red floppy clown shoes of our comic leader slapping the Lincoln Bedroom floor at night, as he paces back and forth. Picture the First Lady clown wife in bed,  her strange orange hued hair up in giant clown curlers, while her clown husband, Mr. President, paces back and forth saying, "I don't know...Muffy...I gave them the funniest speech today about the state of the economy and nobody laughed! What is wrong with this country anyways?" Meanwhile, Muffy is blowing up balloons with helium and sucking down the gas. She says, in a high pitched tone, "Oh Fuzzy, baby, I wouldn't let it worry you. Wear a flower with a water squirter in it. That will get one of those serious-as-a heart-attack generals to laugh!"

In the real world, where frowns are commonplace, we don't have time for levity unless it is in prime time, on our flat TV screens. We always make time for the world of make-believe - the world of films and TV sitcoms. Comedies and drama's are full of modern clowns. Sometimes when I am contemplative, I become deeply delusional about what everyone should be doing in life. Being happy seems to be the only important thing to do. In my world, random acts of kindness are way up there in importance, and making people smile in a grocery store is much more important than whatever is on my shopping list. I am living life of Peter Sellers in 'Being There.' I believe that after a person has tried their hand at, say, being a gardener, they should try being something else, like being an advisor to the President. You only have so many years and then you'll be six feet under. So like, you will go to Heaven and God will say to you, "Um, were you aware you spent over 20,000 days with a frown on your face? You were only happy in fourth grade. Your punishment is to watch the video."

There are no rules that say an accountant cannot have an epiphany in their gray old office cubicle and say aloud, “I am going to be a clown!” Admittedly, this doesn't happen often enough to make more people comfortable throwing away an MBA for a MCBA (Masters of Clown Business Administration). We are on a treadmill, like rats, or the gerbils my son used to raise. Let me tell something about gerbils. After my son abandoned them, I was the one to take care of them. After five generations, those rodents went insane. I tried to make them happy. I built elaborate tunnels that stretched halfway across the kitchen. But eventually, the mom gerbil started eating her children. If this is our future, as a species, count me out. I'm just sayin'.  Ahem. well, no, we aren't gerbils, but we do need more happiness, or, like gerbils we will simply lose ourselves. I mean the crayon toting, joyful us that used to be when all was happy and sunny for most of the day regardless of the weather. 

I threw off conventions some time ago. I simply threw up my hands and said, "That's it; I'm a writer, and it doesn't matter that I don't have a degree in English from an Ivy League school." I simply have to be who I am! And naturally, this meant something less than a financial windfall. I woke up one day, looked in the mirror, and said, with a simple moronic smile on my face, "Okay, you win, God. I will be your court jester."  And God, who was holding all the cards anyway, said, through the honk and rumble of a nearby train, "Yeah, I knew you would come around eventually. Now go find your bliss."

We all have to make a living somehow. We can't all be clowns, regardless of Stephen Sondheim's song. Think what it would do to the oil crisis. All that oil going into clown makeup. Well, maybe it would work out; we'd all be driving strangely festooned bicycles anyway. With parasols. No, not everyone can be a clown. Some have to settle for standup comedy, or weekend gigs juggling, or distracting bulls at rodeos. I envy clowns. I also fear them. Some clowns scare the b'Jesus out of me. Can you really trust someone who covers up their face? Banks feel the same way, why shouldn't I? But some people know early on what they are good at. Mostly they are the children of clowns, or rabbi's. Their daughters want to grow up and marry someone like their fathers. Preferably, someone who keeps kosher and who graduated clown college, and whose idea of fashion is to wear pantaloons. http://www.ringling.com/TextContent.aspx?id=17084&parentID=390&assetFolderID=708

My daughter is afraid of clowns. Perhaps she first began fearing them when she saw a Chinese waiter for the first time, at age three. She had only seen white people up until that point. We said, "Honey, what's wrong?" And she said, "Was that a clown?" I think that was the beginning of her fears for people who looked different. But after living in NYC and Paris, she has developed an immunity to clowns and their first cousins, the mimes. So blame the French for that one.

I was raised by a man who aspired to be a clown. He did not know this, but his behavior suggested it was true. He had the perfect clown physique: long arms, a bit of a belly, very short legs, and comical expressions. All he needed was the outfit. It is no big surprise to me that he settled into square dancing, which requires strange outfits that only a clown could appreciate. My mother used to make clown-like square dance dresses. Her hair was a well coiffed as any clown's. In square dancing the women wear bouncy things to support their dresses. It was not meant as a joke, but it is a joke that goes way back in clown mythology, (probably back to ancient Greece). Women square dancers swing their hips so violently you have to be especially agile or you will be knocked on you back side onto the sawdust covered floor.  Dosey doe-ing (do si do?), refers to 'dosado,' a basic dance step where the man artfully dodges the clown-like dress of his partner, while holding her momentarily to keep her from knocking him down. Square dancing was supposed to be slap-stick, and dosey-doe's ruin what could be a Vaudeville routine. All the moves of square dance can be traced back to circus clown choreography developed in Jolly Olde England. You've got to do something when you have the Plague. Or maybe the women are the  'doe's' and the men are hunting them with their bolo ties. It is a mystery, lost to time.

Anthropological evidence does show a clear connection between clown dresses and square dance dresses. They are both spring loaded. The men's bolo ties are simply poor excuses for their predecessors: the cheap plastic brightly colored flowers that squirted water on innocent bystanders. Male square dancers have settled for cowboy boots (where, I might remind you depend on clowns to distract the bulls, people), when they wanted to wear big floppy red boots. Their huge belt buckles are identical to clown's belt buckles.

When you had a father like mine, you grew up a natural comedian. You tried to be unfunny, but you had to eventually go back to your roots in clown-dom. This is why I only get pleasure anymore out of making people smile. Send in the clowns. As Paul McCartney sang, "I want to build a world with silly love songs. What's wrong with that, I'd like to know...so here I go...again. I love you...."

Why are there so many Jewish comedians? If you can't beat 'em with guns, you beat 'em with jokes. Even the gentiles got into the act. Make 'em laugh, make 'em laugh, make 'em laugh. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FW02c5UNGl0

So, I guess what I am saying is: I was raised by clowns, and I'm okay with that. Like all of us. And if you really love humanity, you will find a way to entertain the people you meet. Out of love, and silliness.