Clowns have no business falling in love. But when they do, they fall heavy. At least I did when I met Amy Anderson. And, as in all great love stories, her first order of business was to remove the appellation of ‘clown’ from my curriculum vitae. For no woman actually wants to be associated with a professional buffoon. This sad fact has influenced the history of the world from Adam on down. Adam wanted to throw a pie at the snake in the Garden of Eden, but Eve persuaded him instead to listen to the serpent’s sales pitch. The results, as we all know, were not immediately happy. And I, blinded by love, was willing to go along with Amy’s plans for me. For a while.
While I had toiled in the Ringling clown alley, the art of clowning gave me a sense of pride and purpose. The world needed clowns, needed to laugh at their antics. But now that I was cut off from clowning, stuck in a small North Dakota town where my only concern was gathering local news for broadcast, that purpose-driven mindset began to dwindle. I should have replaced it with a desire to become the best professional broadcaster I could be -- but somehow clown alley had poisoned my perspective on any regular career. They all seemed stuffy and pompous. None more so than the work of a radio newscaster. It was all very serious.
Amy, certainly, took my work more seriously than I did. She was ambitious for my success in radio -- and beyond.
So when I casually mentioned to her one evening, during a cozy makeout session, that the local TV station, KUMV, was looking for a weatherman, she flung me from her arms in a frenzy of vicarious ambition.
“You’ve got to audition for that job, Timmy!” she said breathlessly.
“Sure thing, cupcake. Let’s talk about it later and get comfy again, okay?” I replied, amorously determined to regain the recent status quo.
“This is just what you’ve been looking for” she continued, heedless of my lovelorn expression. Cupid had struck out again.
She grilled me remorselessly about the position. I had heard about it during a visit to the Williston cop shop during a lull in Chief Atol’s litany of recent crimes under investigation -- a missing manhole cover on Main Street; the sighting of a moose eating laundry off somebody’s wash line; and the pressing need for a new dog catcher -- or, rather, animal control officer, as Atol phrased it. Clint Bevans, the local TV newscaster at KUMV, had mentioned the opening to me, wondering if I would be interested in trying out for it. My knee jerk reaction had been no thanks, simply because getting to the station, which was several miles out on the highway, would have been a hassle for me, since I didn’t drive.
Amy was aghast at my cavalier attitude towards this potential career boost.
“You call him back and tell him you’ll be there tomorrow for an audition! I’ll take a day off from school to drive you myself” she said fervently. Her eyes danced with a keen determination to push me in the right direction. And suddenly I realized that here was a woman who wanted me to succeed. This was a new and intoxicating idea to me -- a true blue helpmeet. Up until then the women in my life, such as my mother and my sisters and my other girl friends, seemed to barely tolerate my existence -- they were more concerned with their own personal agendas or simply wanted me to shut up and behave myself. But Amy was different. This was a kind of love I had never experienced before. Only a fool would ignore it. And I was not such a fool as that. Not yet, at least.
So the next day I went down to KUMV-TV to audition for weatherman. I dressed in my Sunday best -- white shirt and staid blue tie; black slacks, and spit polished faux Florsheims. At Amy’s insistent urging, I even wore a pair of black socks instead of my ubiquitous white cotton ones. As Clint and Amy watched from the sidelines, I picked up a long wooden pointer to begin improvising about high pressure ridges and the probability of precipitation. This was back in the dear departed days when you didn’t need a shred of meteorological training to do the weather. It was all about ‘personality.’ Things were going smoothly until I tripped over a thick camera cable on the floor. The old clown instincts took over -- instead of quickly regaining my balance to continue the forecast, I dived headfirst through the weather map, made of flimsy paper, and rolled over in my best Buster Keaton style, ending with my feet sticking straight up in the air.
After a moment of bemused silence, Clint thanked me for coming in and said they’d keep in touch. It was an obvious kiss-off.
On the way back into town Amy maintained a frosty silence. I knew I had purposely blown the audition, so for once in my life I kept my big mouth shut. Something told me that it was crucial to my future relationship to let her have the first, and last, word.
Her opening salvo, when we got back to my place, was a loaded question.
“You messed that up on purpose, didn’t you?” she asked, arms akimbo and eyes blazing with righteous indignation. Since there was no right answer, I just gave her the truth.
“Yeah. Once a clown, always a clown.”
“If you really loved me . . . “ she began, and I wilted. This was the end. I’d alienated another woman. Again.
But this is where the real fairy tale romance begins. For instead of finishing that dreadful sentence, she paused, tried to look stern and pouty, and then broke into a beaming smile and began to laugh.
“You big poop head” she said, opening her arms to me.
(to be continued)
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