There was only one bully I had trouble with in the Ringling clown alley. For the most part clowns are peaceable folk, wanting to be left alone to concoct their outrageous jokes. Pundits claim that the buffoon holds a mirror up to humanity to show us our faults and foibles in a distorted but amiable lampoon -- Make jokes, not war, is their immemorial motto. But there’s always a hectoring exception.
I was plagued by bullies throughout my school years. In grade school a little runt named David enjoyed taunting me for being so tall and skinny and for having a large nose. He sat behind me, the better to throw erasers at my unoffending head and poke my behind with sharpened pencils. If I dared complain of his unwanted attentions to the teacher I could be sure of a pummeling by him during recess. He finally received his comeuppance in sixth grade, when he made the mistake of mouthing off to Mr. Berg -- a case hardened veteran of the Korean War who did not suffer weisenheimers gladly. I still recall with great satisfaction how Mr. Berg picked David up by the scruff of his neck and bodily threw him out into the hallway. He was not allowed back into class until he meekly offered an apology in front of the whole class. That knocked the wind out of his sails but good, and I never had to worry about his threats or kicks again.
In high school there was a gang of bullies who preyed on the weak and handicapped. They roamed the halls in a sinister pack, like ill-bred wolves, looking for the boy on crutches to trip or the homely girl to taunt until she burst into tears. They marked me early on as an easy target, since I never pushed back. I was tall and thin, with no sense of self worth to stiffen my spine. They frequently grabbed my homework and threw it in the toilet in the Boys Room. Or dropped mashed potatoes on my head in the lunchroom. It was a tough blue collar school, where everyone expected you to stand up for yourself and not be a crybaby. But I was a crybaby, a dedicated coward who prefered to hide in the janitor’s closet when I saw them approaching. When cornered by these momsers I instinctively used zany humor as my last ditch defense, falling on the floor to do the Curly runaround and whimpering “Woo woo woo!” This saved my bacon on numerous occasions, as they would sneer “retard” at me and melt away.
Their fate was sealed one day in gym class when they decided to gang up on one of the deaf kids who were included in our school programs. This hard of hearing colossus was six foot and weighed three hundred pounds. His glabrous face made him appear to be a placid idiot, but he was full of pent up frustrations waiting for an outlet -- when the bullies started in on him he simply mopped the floor with them, hurling one of the meanest against the horizontal wooden bars that lined the gym walls and pinning him there until several of the wooden doles cracked in half. Mr. Ciatti, the gym teacher, watched the massacre with calm approval, and when the bullies finally cried uncle he took them down to the principal’s office and had them expelled that very day. It was a heart-warming experience for all of their many victims.
I considered everyone in clown alley as my friend, or at least as being disinterested in using me as a punching bag. But as that first season rolled on one of my fellow Clown College chums, who was portentously nicknamed Don deBully, developed an intense dislike for me, based, most likely, on the fact that I was very popular with the veteran clowns and he was not. Whatever the reason, he began to refer to me as ‘Norman the Mormon’ and to snap his towel at me, inflicting vicious little welts on my arms and legs. He thought this was enormously funny. I bore these as stoically as possible, but when he saw I would not fight back he began flicking his towel in my face, with the possible intention of depriving me of an eye. Humor was no defense against his onslaughts -- since he was a circus clown just like me. Tim Holst intervened several times on my behalf, getting in the bully’s face and growling “Cut it out -- he’s only a kid.” Since Holst was short and squat and very muscular from having spent the year before Clown College dipping railroad ties in creosote, the bullying would abate for a while. But Don always started up again.
I would like to be able to report that I eventually turned the tables on him, serving him up a dose of his own medicine in that satisfying way Harold Lloyd often did in his silent films. Or to write that one fine day he got too close to the big cats and they ripped him to shreds in a satisfying Grand Guignol way. But such was not the case.
He was brought down in the dust by bad teeth. His upbringing apparently never included any dental hygiene to speak of, and by the time he joined Ringling his open mouth gave the appearance of a neglected graveyard, with blackened headstones leaning every which way. He had to have several root canals during the season, eventually losing over half of his non-pearly whites. His jaw became so tender that the slightest touch made him groan in pain. He and Rubber Neck did a vigorous slap boxing routine that was a bona fide crowd pleaser, but he finally begged boss clown LeVoi Hipps to be released from this torture -- every time one of the flat leather gloves so much as tapped him gently he bellowed in torture, which only added to the crowd’s merriment, since they thought it was part of the act. LeVoi, who shared the veteran clown’s dislike for Don, wouldn’t let him out of the gag -- pointing out, rightly, that it was one of clown alley’s biggest hits that season. Don was soon reduced to a quivering shadow of his former self, and, like a bull with a ring embedded in its nose, could be easily controlled by the mere wave of a hand near his face. I only had to wave at him once to send him scurrying away.
Thus ended the reign of terror of Don deBully in clown alley. And that, my dear kiddies, is why I highly recommend good dental hygiene to one and all from an early age. Unless you happen to be an unpleasant browbeater -- then my advice is to gorge on sweets and never brush your teeth.
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