Clown Fears

Ah… fond memories of the WFD Clown Team… and an afternoon with Pat Cushing and Mario Piva. It was innocent enough. Just an afternoon with 500 of the toughest kids under 12 in Windsor and a Charity event where the entertainment was performed by the Clown Team itself.

During our antics on stage at the Odeon Theatre Pat Cushing decided to take a cast iron coffee mug and, taking aim, hit me in the middle of the forehead with the mug. It was a gentle blow with a nice hollow sound to it and by the response of the audience of 500 under 12 year olds it was an enormous success. In my “wisdom” I asked Pat to do it again and knowing Pat he decided to be a bit more theatrical. Asking Pat to replicate the act of humour has made me question my sanity since that day. In his exuberance Pat nailed me right in the middle of my forehead with such a blow that I thought I had been hit with a sledgehammer! All I can remember was Pat laughing hysterically and the mob of 500 little kiddies laughing uncontrollably. I swear that I saw my life flash before my eyes and I thought…’Hummm….. So this is what it's like before you pass on’.

When I gained consciousness the kids were still laughing and Mario was about to perform his juggling act while he was ‘blindfolded’. It was a pretty good trick because the act was performed by standing sideways to the audience. When Mario juggled these large hoops it appeared that he was doing it completely sightless. The trick was that the blindfold had a huge hole over one eye so that he could see perfectly well. I stood in front of Mario about 10 feet away holding the hoops and asked him if he was ready… “YES”, he answered in a booming voice. It was then that I threw the hoops at him and they hit him in the chest between his outstretched arms and landed on the stage floor. The kids laughed again. While he was pretending to search on the floor for the hoops I would come over to volunteer to pick them up and hand them to him. With great animation he would throw one up and grab that and then the next one. After some time he was juggling all the hoops at once. The crowd went crazy at his “talent”! It was then that he decided to turn his face towards the kids in the seats. That’s when it got very scary. The silence in the theater was deafening! The little kiddies just stared at us and then started to boo and yelled at us calling us ‘cheats’. Then they charged the stage enmasse! I was pretty certain that my life passed before my eyes for the second time within a half hour! We were very lucky that the stage was a lot taller than they were and the ushers showed up to help us. It’s hard to be a happy clown when you’re under attack.