Tag Archives: clown

Sometimes it is entirely necessary to acknowledge the fool and the helpless, hopeless clown that lives inside us all. Okay, I hear what you are thinking.  Not you.  There is no clown inside of you… only me.  That is one of a myriad of mistakes that makes me acknowledge that I am far short of perfection.  I am not a know-it-all.  I am a know-it-sometimes who too often tries to bluster his way through like he isn’t completely unsure of himself and terrified that other people will see what he truly is and laugh him out of business.  I am a pratfall, butt-of-the-joke, snicker-at-snidely sort of buffoon who never gets it right and deserves every guffaw thrown at him.  Clowns are often all blue, squishy, and sad on the inside.  That is often the only thing that makes us funny.  Do you know what brought on this wave of self pity?  Of course you do.  No man ever went through a day of stumble-muffs and misquotes, goof-ups and stubbed toes like I did without feeling at least a little bit that way.  Oh?  Not you, again?  I hear you.  It must be nice to never make mistakes.     I have my car registered with the wrong registration sticker.  When I tried to get the State inspection done, I found out my car is now supposed to be the old van my wife destroyed in a car accident last spring.  My bank’s bill-pay service has twice sent money to the electric company which somehow lost the electronic check.  I can’t even handle idiot-proof details anymore.  My son who was home on leave went back to the Marine Corps early this morning.  I took him to the airport and had to bring all his deodorant spray, shampoo, and toothpaste back home with me because soap on an airplane equals terrorist.  Apparently, that should’ve all gone into the bags we checked, because that stuff only explodes in the carry-on bags, never the baggage compartment.  I am called out for my many writing mistakes, even the ones I made on purpose trying to be funny, and my self-editor let me down on several occasions in the past week.  So I am depressed.  At life I am, at best, a .125 hitter, barely making more than one hit in every ten at-bats.  I am a rodeo clown trying to play in a basketball game, and the bulls are all Michael Jordan.  (How’s that for a mangled metaphor?)    But it isn’t all the blues that I am singing.  Good things have happened too.  Life continues in my unlikely body afflicted with six incurable diseases, and I am a cancer survivor since 1983.  The golf-ball sized growth the surgeon removed from the back of my head last week was benign, no sign of cancer.  My son was home on leave.  Every day is it’s own miracle.  And I have gotten some writing done.  So what if every editor and every reader doesn’t fall in love with every single word?   The story goes on for at least another day.