The Clown

Writer's Cramp: Write a COMEDY story that includes the following:
a frisbee, a box of old golf balls, a broken camera, a tattoo, and a valuable old painting.





492 words


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The Clown

         I’ve always wanted to be a clown. I figure there’s nothing more important than laughter. So I wear my shoes ten sizes too big, dangle orange and purple baggy pants around my skinny waist and thighs, wrap happy face suspenders around my lavender blouse, and top it off with a painted smile that runs from cheek to cheek.

         That’s why I was at the hospital last Saturday, attempting to make some very sick children laugh. They were doing pretty well considering that their arms were hooked up to tubes and most of them felt more like vomiting than laughing.

         I was juggling a box of old golf balls on a turquoise Frisbee. Those balls were galloping around that edge like a dog was chasing them, and I held that contraption on my head, under my legs, between my knees, and anyplace else that looked silly enough to cheer up those poor bald-headed little children.

         The nurses were rolling their eyes and a doctor or two stopped and noticed my efforts, but none of them were whooping it up in the hall over my antics. I was just trying to figure what to do next, when I noticed the man with the tattoo walking by. He was the jerk from the newspaper who wanted to get pictures of the kids just so he could write an article that would make everyone cry. His intention was to add bucks to his own wallet, but he had a line from here to Chicago about how he’d be doing a service to enlighten everyone about the treatments they were undergoing.

         Sure, like these kids wanted publicity for being bald, for having their guts thrown-up every time they tried to eat. It wasn’t the way these kids wanted life to be, and they sure didn’t want their misery spread across the Sunday Times.

         The sight of the man, frankly, stirred my blood into boiling cause he didn’t see what was in front of him. He was so full of avarice, he probably didn't notice the kids. He only saw the dollar signs.

         I don’t know why one of my golf balls suddenly left the rim of the Frisbee. It must have galloped around the racetrack, I guess, one time too quickly. But it went flying across the room, splat, crack, boom.

         The result was: one broken camera, one angry tattoo man, and unfortunately, the destruction of one valuable old painting that had been hanging on the wall behind him. That was the bad part. However, the good part about it all, is that the ball landed right inside the portrait’s mouth, pushed itself in far enough to find itself a roost, and in so doing, created the most unbelievably beautiful chorus of giggles, laughs and roars that the Chemo wing had ever heard.

         I really hadn’t meant to do it, and I’m very sorry, but I do admit, I’d do anything to bring laughter to the world. Anything.


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