I wrote a post sometime back about my mother’s angel collection. You could look in any corner of my mother’s house and find an angel hiding somewhere. However, my father collected clowns. And just like Mom’s angels, Dad’s clowns were everywhere.
I never went through the whole “clowns are creepy” phase. Growing up with them all over the house pretty much cured me of that. My children, however, hated them. To this day, my 32-year-old daughter has a horrible fear of clowns. Not the ones that are designed to be creepy. No, she’s freaked out by the ones that are supposed to make you smile.
Though my dad had clowns everywhere, the one I remember most was a large, framed poster of Emmett Kelly that hung in his living room. Emmett Kelly worked for the Ringling Bros. and Barnum and Bailey Circus from 1941 to 1956. Though he had created a character called Weary Willie some years before as a cartoon character, it was this character that would make Emmett Kelly famous.
My dad would dress up as a clown every year at Halloween. He would go in full make-up and the most flamboyant clothes you’ve ever seen. He had a rainbow wig he’d wear every year and would cover his face in white pancake makeup. Have you ever tried to get that stuff out of a man’s beard? I have and it sucks.
One of the last clowns I ever bought for my dad’s collection was a Homie the Clown doll from In Living Color. I did it as a joke, but my dad loved it. In fact, it got pride of place on my dad’s front porch. It was a screened-in porch and Homie got his own chair right by the door. That always made me laugh.
I’ve always thought the reason my dad collected clowns was because he’d always wanted to be one. My dad was a hoot and was always trying to make everyone else laugh. He was called the class clown on a couple of his report cards that my grandmother kept over the years. He never passed up a chance to go to the circus so he could see the clowns. And whenever he got the chance, he’d dress up as a clown in hopes of putting a smile on someone’s face.
To this day, I can’t look at a clown and not think about my dad. Unfortunately, most clowns you see these days are meant to cause fear, not smiles. I’m not scared of the clowns with sharp teeth and menacing eyes, I just find them distasteful. I still love the clowns that carry balloons, sing without abandon, and wear shoes five sizes too big.
Remember, when you’re joking around and doing all those silly things that make you smile, it’s called clowning around, and there’s a very good reason for that. Clowns are supposed to make you happy and feel good. And for me, that’s exactly what they do.
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Christine Graves has been writing for more than 30 years. She runs several blogs including Priestess of Words, Collected Keepsakes, and Mystic Realms, all of which are part of her company, Graves Publications.
Christine is also an avid crafter and multi-media artist. She runs two online stores. Prairied Treasures is where she showcases her handmade greeting cards and other multi-media art, and Pathways through the Past is where she sells her AI art creations on a wide variety of products.
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