Spike The Elephant

I was walking through our local Leisure center on the way to buy my ticket on a dream the other day when a clown passed by me. I’d like to think that I am a mature, worldly sort of guy that can take most things in stride. I’d be wrong of course, but I look better to myself this way.

I couldn’t help but smile when the clown passed me. It isn’t that I thought the clown was funny or even ridiculous. He was ridiculous, but I didn’t think that, well maybe just a little. What made me smile was that the clown had a bag of groceries in his arms and was heading home after what was more than likely a hellish day. He had the look of a man with just one frayed nerve left and could snap at any moment. Perhaps that’s why I didn’t want to smile or even laugh.

When I worked in the post office, I would take a “civilian” coat or sweater with me to cover my uniform if I had to do shopping right after work. You can only take so many “What? You can’t be finished work already! I’m paying you to go shopping?” These comments and more like them would invariably end with me telling the person that I would like a raise, ask him why he thought I wasn’t on my way to work or just tell him to go fuck himself. I would imagine that clowns get similar stupid comments from the public at large. I would have put a jacket over the plaid sports coat with the big flower and huge bow tie. I would certainly have wiped the face makeup off with a rag or even the plaid coat. Same thing I suppose. You know the easiest thing he could have done would have been to take off the red nose.

He had these baggy yellow pants, but since the leisure centre is beside a high school he actually fit in pants wise. No one believes that his feet are really that big! If they were, he would have to wear big old baggy pants to cover the size of his…ohhhh. That’s another thing I hate about clowns, and I guess why they always seem to be smiling.

I used to deliver mail to a couple of married clowns that lived on my mail route. It was pretty weird to get mail addressed to either Mr.Bebe or Mrs.Bobo the clown. I would see them out doing the gardening or just being more or less normal. Sometimes they would be driving their kids to school. I often wondered what the kids would say when asked what their parents did for a living. It would be pretty cool in the lower grades, but as they got into high school, it would be pretty painful. Kids can be cruel.

I talked to them a few times and of course they met at Clown College. I wondered if they would cruise to the A & W in a tiny car with about ten other students all blasted on helium and latex. They seemed to be pretty normal people that worked at an abnormal kind of job. I guess they would make a good living, what with kid’s parties, street festivals and selling balloon animals on street corners. It would be the perfect cover for drug dealers of course and they could hide more than a few kilos of dope in those baggy pants. Maybe that’s why they smile so much.

I guess I am going to have to put the house up for sale soon, once the clowns start moving in, it opens up the neighbourhood to all kinds of circus folk. I don’t like it when a neighbours dog craps on the lawn, can you imagine the pile Spike the elephant would leave?