Charles Dickens, William Shakespeare, Walt Disney, and Edgar Allen Poe (the four clowns depicted above) all probably had times in their writing life when they didn’t really have anything to write about. Charles Dickens couldn’t think of anything but his time in the boot-black factory and the misery he felt as a child raised in poverty. So, what did he do? He created Wilkins Micawber as a stand-in for his ne’er-do-well father who always believed, “Something will presently turn up.” And he wrote the semi-autobiographical novel David Copperfield.
William Shakespeare didn’t actually write anything with his grade-school education and limited knowledge of the world. But when the Earl of Oxford who used his name as a nom de plume could think of nothing, he thought of ending it all, and the “To-be-or-not-to-be…” play, Hamlet, poured out of his quill pen onto paper.
And when Walt Disney rode the train in defeat, having lost his best comic character for cartoons, Oswald the Rabbit, to his old boss, he doodled a mouse and named him Mickey, even providing Mickey’s falsetto voice for decades on the silver screen. Oh, and claiming the rights to any further characters his studios produced… to this day.
Poe looked at the bust over his chamber door… and saw a raven. Instantly, NEVERMORE.
Now it’s Mickey’s turn to write about nothing, and try to live up to the nothing-masters’ artistic masterpieces of yore. For instance, the boy in the picture. I drew him from a nude model in a black-and-white photo. Nobody in class, not even the one who brought the picture, ever told me his name. And the class was forty-four years ago now. So, assuming the picture wasn’t old back then, the boy is now older than fifty-four, and possibly significantly older than that now. So it is a picture of a nude nobody in front of an abandoned house in the snow however-many years ago in a place that is probably nowhere now. And I won’t even mention the imaginary puzzle pieces floating through the air for nobody to put together. What’s that? I just mentioned them? What did I mention? They are really just nothing.
So, there is a time and a place for writing about everything. Even if that everything includes nothing… and that nothing is nowhere… and is about nobody.
Catch a Falling Star 
Fix Coulrophobia… Now!
I love clowns. I always have. When I was five I wanted to be a clown. Red Skelton is my personal hero and role model, the reason I became a teacher, to use my clown skills for good rather than evil. But sinister folks who think they are joking are seriously jeopardizing all of that.
In 1988 I did watch and enjoy the movie Killer Klowns from Outer Space. It was funny. And I liked Stephen King’s “It” as a horror movie. It was definitely scary. But 2016 has become the year of the creepy clown. Why would any idiot want to dress up in an expensive horror-clown mask and clown suit to wave at somebody’s security camera at two in the morning? And, Mr. Idiot, did you at least try to figure out if the homeowner was a gun owner in an open carry State? One of the recent clowns to be arrested turned out to be a teenage boy… you know, the ultimate planner and thinker-ahead-er.
I would like to propose that we prosecute a case or two of creepy clowns in the woods at night with a mandatory “How to Love a Clown” class. After all, clowns are a worthy thing. How many clowns over how many years have handed out candy to kids and brought a smile to small faces during a Fourth of July parade? How many circus clowns like the Great Emmett Kelly made us laugh with a pantomime routine? How many Shrine Circus clowns helped entertain us and raise money to fight childhood disease and cancer? Bob Keeshan who was Clarabell the Clown on Howdy Doody helped raise me and make me the person I am now as Captain Kangaroo. The real creepy clown crime is that they are taking the image of a clown, which is a very good thing and turning it into something bleak and horrifying. My purpose for this post is to remind you of the good things about the people under the face paint. I want you to remember a few of these.
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Tagged as clown, clowns, horror, poetry, writing