Confessions of a Birthday Party Clown.

 

Memories of a birthday party clown

I’ve been writing limericks all morning, just to get that tawdry itch out of my system. Now i’m ready to tackle something more serious – my memories of doing  birthday parties as a clown. What i remember is a mixture of the mundane and miraculous. 

I came home to minneapolis the winter of 1973/74 a physical wreck from my time spent in mexico studying pantomime with sigfrido aguilar.  I had caught some kind of bug that disrupted my innards to the point where each meal was a prelude to an agonized and extended stay in the banyo.  I recuperated at my parent’s house, gradually regaining control over my bowels. Once i was up and running again I planned to rejoin sigfrido’s mime troop on their world tour. But one vibrant spring day, as the robins pulled fat earthworms from the sodden green grass and the sparkling blue sky was swept by wisps of blinding white clouds, i idly opened the ensign magazine and was immediately galvanized by an article by President Spencer W. Kimbal – “Every Young Man a Missionary.”  his ringling declaration of the duty of every young man in the church to serve a mission hit me like a two-by-four on the side of the head. I knew i had to get ready to go on a mission, not cavort around the globe with sigfrido’s merry andrews. 

But where was the money to go on a two year mission to come from? I had about a hundred bucks in the bank and was living on the cuff with the folks. When i reported to my branch president Lewis Church my willingness to serve, he gave me the financial facts of life – i had to have five thousand dollars salted away in the bank to qualify for a mission call. Provided i met all the other requirements as well.

Jobs were as scarce as irish rabbis back then. When i reported my lack of gainful employment to president church he said “Tim, why don’t you work as a birthday party clown?”

“Huh?” I replied brilliantly.

Quick as a wink president church outlined a poster on a sheet of white copy paper with a magic marker that extolled my virtues as a children’s entertainer, including my phone number at the bottom. Disregarding church policy about making copies for private purposes, he used the library copier to run me off a hundred birthday clown posters to put up all around town. Which i immediately began doing.

Up in prospect park i taped a poster to a pole outside a big ornate victorian house and was invited inside by its owner – the young widow of John Berryman the poet. She hired me to perform at her 8 year old daughter’s party. I don’t remember her name, but i bless that widow’s memory because she invited a friend of hers to the party.  A reporter for the minneapolis star newspaper. The reporter interviewed me extensively, brought a photographer along, and even agreed to print my phone number in her story. It ran on a saturday and my parent’s phone began ringing like mad.

Hurray!  Suddenly i had all the birthday party work i could handle.  i even spent a week at paul bunyan land up in brainerd.

But alas, since i didn’t drive or own a car, i hit on what i considered a brilliant business gambit. I told prospective clients that my car was in the garage and if they would come pick me up and bring me home i would give them a fifty percent discount. And since i only charged twenty dollars per party (and a party could go on for hours and hours) i was only averaging about ten bucks a day. It would take a long time to build my bank account up to five thousand smackeroos that way.

But then another miracle happened. My old circus pal steve smith, with whom i had studied pantomime down in mexico, called me up with good news. He had negotiated a deal with the ringling circus owner, irvin feld, to do the advance clowning for the show – traveling ahead of the show to perform at schools, hospitals, libraries, and be on radio, tv, and interviewed by reporters for newspapers. Good old Smith immediately thought of me, he told me, after he signed the deal, and asked old man Feld if he wanted an advance clown team. Feld said sure, so smith selflessly created the immortal clown team of T.J. Tatters and Dusty. (My official ringling clown name was dusty.) 

My salary from that job was enough to fill my coffers down at the farmers and mechanics savings bank in minneapolis with the requisite five thousand.

But all that ensued as advance clown is a tale for another day. I want to back up to the nuts and bolts of being a birthday party clown. Or at least what i can dredge up from a faltering memory that sputters and goes out like a campfire in a simoom.  

I did balloon animals. Without a balloon pump. I blew those suckers up one at a time and tied them into dogs, giraffes, and swords for the ravenous little nippers until my fingers grew as stiff and brittle as spaghetti pasta. I quickly learned that kids, when given a fragile balloon sculpture, do not cherish it but stomp on it and bite it until it pops, and then come crying back to me demanding another one. And another one. And another one. 

The birthday party clown has to eat a large piece of birthday cake or the birthday child feels slighted. You might think that would be pleasant. And the first dozen times it is – but after that the cloying sweetness got to me and i managed to make my piece of cake ‘disappear’ by covering it with a napkin and then smashing it with the flat of my hand. Hey, i was a clown – i could get away with anything.

I could juggle. Just barely. When i dropped one of my expensive solid rubber lacrosse balls (what all professional jugglers use) i had to scramble like lightning to get it back before one of the kids would grab it and run away with it like a jack rabbit. Children firmly believe that anything a clown drops is a party favor and now belongs to them.

I played my musical saw, getting the kids to sing ‘happy birthday to you.’ the adults at the party were fascinated by my saw and requested many an encore, but the kids couldn’t see what all the fuss was about. After one or two songs they’d begin to wander away, looting the kitchen and pouring koolaid on the persian carpets.

I tried doing magic but there is always one child who feels compelled to yell at the top of their lungs ‘it’s a fake!’ so i’d go back to making more balloon animals.

I had a routine with a golf club and marshmallows which usually went over well. But once the kids got ahold of something as sticky and malleable as a marshmallow they’d start a shooting war with each other. The marshmallows wound up on the drapes and stuck to the ceiling.

All in all, i’d have to say that being a birthday party clown was good training for future parenthood – it showed me plainly how capricious and treacherous children could be. The lovable side of a child rarely appears during the selfish gluttony of their own birthday party. 

I still get offers to do birthday parties from time to time today. I always reply with a bland yet predatory smile that i would be glad to make a brief appearance at the child’s party. For the paltry sum of five hundred dollars. So far, thank heavens, i’ve had no takers.