Tuesday . October 15 . 2002 . 8:25pm |
they're already heeeeeere... I work in a children's hospital. Where there is a children's hospital, there are sick children. And where there are sick children, there are clowns. They come by every day, these unholy agents of the Big Top, with their rouged and powdered faces, funny hats on head, yarn wigs underneath, bearing their squishy shoes and ukeleles and ow-OOO-gah horns. They walk through the corridors and try to make you laugh. They try to make everyone laugh. Even those of us determined never, ever, to make eye contact with clowns. I fear the clowns. Some of them are pretty normal. Those are the ones for whom clowning is a regular nine-to-five job. They understand that the clowns are there for the kids, and there's no need to goof it up with the people who actually work in the hospital, because frankly, we're busy, and pretty annoyed most of the time. (One clown said to me one day, "Careful moving back in the elevator. I spilled my coffee on someone yesterday because they backed up into me." I looked at him with an uncomfortable expectant smile on my face, waiting for the punchline. There was none. He was just being a regular guy. Good clown.) And then there are those for whom clowning is a complete lifestyle. I'm not talking Patch Adams or anything here, I'm talking about the scary clowns that never, ever break character, not even when it's just you and them in a room and nary a child is in sight. It's these clowns that play the ukelele and sing songs in a teeny tiny voice while it's you and them, trapped in an elevator together, going down. (Or, as they would say, "Going clown." No, seriously, they really do say that.) They're the ones that try to engage you while you're running around trying to draw bloods, squirting water from their flowers or doing their funny clown walk, or making pun after pun after stupid pun until you twist your mouth upward into the semblence of a smile, or choke out a few chuffing sounds approximating laughter. Or, until you cry. Not until then will they leave you alone. I fear and loathe the clowns. At this one hospital I worked at last year, the clowns wouldn't even break character in the employee cafeteria. They would wander in and stand on line, all flouncy skirts and rainbow afro wigs, and pretend to sit on each other, pratfall, and spill food all over the place, while the rest of us all studiously avoided looking in their general direction, lest we attract their attention and they decided to attack. Next thing you know, they'd be sitting on and spilling food over us. And then we would be all up close with them and smell their sweaty clown wigs and dirty unwashed clown clothes, and see the smears of white and red greasepaint caked in crevices of leathery skin all close up, and we would look up and see grim clown eyes, flinty and evil behind painted on smiles, and oh, it would just be horrible. I fear and loathe and avoid the clowns at all cost. And so should you. xo Michelle |
