The Clown

By John Grantner

 

Eighth grade, the last step before high school. Nobody wondered more than I did how I got to this point. As a dyslexic kid with attention deficit disorder, my teachers dismissed me as stupid and incorrigible.

I slid through all of grade school with a consistent C-minus grade-point average, but I assume now that my GPA may have been lower if St. Nicholas’s faculty hadn’t pushed me from one grade to the next just to get rid of me.

I believe my C-minus wasn’t a D-minus or an F because faced with the prospect of holding me back to repeat a grade, and spend another year coping with me, each teacher decided to kick the nuisance down the road.

All of the adults around me had assumed that I was impervious to learning, like a duck’s plumage is to water, but that’s not how I saw it. My problem was that the proscribed fill-in-the-blank and multiple-choice exams mostly asked me what I didn’t know rather than what I did know.

An educational system operating like a factory assembly line succeeds in its simplistic, efficient way for most students, churning out uniformly compliant and uninspired workers who can read instruction manuals and fill out forms, but it doesn’t work for the likes of me. I’m one of the factory rejects.

Besides struggling academically, I was a behavioral problem, I can’t deny it. I was bored. I was disengaged. I couldn’t keep up with what was going on, so I stopped trying. What to do in those circumstances?

May as well have fun, I figured, and goof off. And sure teachers, like everybody else, talk shop when they socialize, they compare notes on the students.

The kindergarten teacher telling the first-grade teacher who are the smart kids, who are dumb, who are troublemakers, who are angels, and so on up through all eight grades.

So, at the beginning of each academic year before I even set foot in the classroom I was already tagged as a bad apple in the barrel. After kindergarten, each subsequent teacher approached me armed with the strategies and tactics to counter whatever “bad apple” happened to mean to each of them respectively.

It was clear to me from the beginning that the die was cast. They’d determined I was a misfit and anathema and could never be anything else. I couldn’t fight that, so I embraced it and made the best of it.

I became what they said I was because they—both teachers and students—gave me no other option: A goof. The class clown. A slacker. Good for making a joke now and then, and I took being the butt of jokes like a good sport.

A comic foil. For students I provided a welcome diversion, but I was also an oddball, the slightly weird kid. Social skills were a mystery to me, so I wasn’t someone the other kids would love to hang out with, but not someone they’d chase away either. I stayed on the periphery, and that was OK for me. For everybody.

So naturally, when it came to matters of the heart and the hormones, I again found myself on the periphery. Girls tended not to notice me in that way.

I was too immature, both physically and emotionally. Too clumsy in every way. Too weird for most of them for any interaction deeper than that required for the classroom practical joke du jour.

Except for Michelle Nowicki. She noticed me. I noticed her noticing me.

Michelle and I became friendly in fifth grade. Through sixth grade, we grew from being occasional, casual and chatty acquaintances, to actively seeking each other’s company to share classroom rumors and gossip, or talk about popular culture—then after a time, to sharing a few private thoughts now and then.

Arching over all this was a slowly growing flirtation begun by Michelle—because girls grow up faster than boys—but that I always noticed. Looking at me that way, straight into my eyes, briefly, locking them in her stare before turning quickly away and smiling.

Making physical contact with me; touching my hand when taking a borrowed pen, brushing against me when we passed in the aisle between desks when there was enough room for us to not touch; not shrinking away when—after I figured out that these repeated contacts weren’t accidental—I began to do the same.

But, I thought, I must be reading it wrong. Girls aren’t into me that way. I didn’t want to form the thought: She could do better. Nor the thought: I don’t want to be embarrassed and humiliated so I’d best back off.

Thing was, this was hard for me to grasp. Unlike me, Michelle was normal in every way. She got decent grades—not great but good enough—teachers didn’t hate her or love her. She was friendly with everybody and everybody was friendly with her. She fit in.

And she was pretty. It seemed to me that she got prettier by the day. Not Barbie doll, plastic, cutesy pretty, but pretty in a natural way. She looked good without makeup, with her hair cut simply and tied back in a ponytail, wearing a simple school uniform—not that makeup would have been permitted by either the school or Michelle’s parents—and I speculated how she’d look powdered and painted like a grown up lady, like my mom or one of my aunts going to church on a Sunday morning, and I thought, no, that would ruin it all.

She had a warm and honest smile. She smelled good. And she was nice to know—kind and generous and fun and funny. All of which raised a conundrum: Michelle’s everything I’m not, so I’m not her type.

After some weeks of the “looks,” the flirting, the smiles whenever we saw each other, the fact that we were hanging together each day and she hadn’t told me to get out of her face!

I finally bypassed the conundrum and accepted the improbable: She really likes me, and I really like her and this feels so good. And by the time seventh grade ended and eighth grade began, the other kids knew we were totally more than just friends. It was common knowledge. However, Michelle and I had never actually talked about it.

One afternoon toward the end of the school year I had decided to steel myself and go to the after-school mixer, where eighth grade teacher Mr. McNally served as DJ, spinning screened and approved records, and the students from St. Nicholas School and nearby Samuel Gompers Public School danced, while Sister Corda and Miss Riordan chaperoned, assuring the kids’ outward behavior was appropriately chaste.

Because Michelle would be there, I knew he had to attend and, God help me, dance. That was worrisome. I didn’t mind playing the fool in class, but any sort of formal social event was always distressing for me, and I was worried I’d look unintentionally comical dancing with her.

I had to look cool. Sophisticated. Confident. Thing is, I was socially awkward, more so than most socially awkward kids, and I accepted that, but I was physically awkward as well. A classic klutz, I could trip over a grain of sand, as my old man liked to say. And dancing? Rhythm was something my body refused to acknowledge.

My attempts at dancing—practiced at home in advance of the mixer, with a tinny-sounding radio playing—looked like I was having a seizure. My sisters laughed so hard they cried watching me.

I asked my mom for advice, maybe a lesson, but between her daytime mothering and her night job as an office cleaner, she had no time for something so trivial, for something that should come naturally, for Chrissake.

“Stevie, don’t think about it, just do it,” she said absently while she was chopping vegetables for stew. “Feel the music and move. It’s as easy as walking.”

She saw the pained desperation in my eyes and paused, gave me a hug and a kiss on my forehead and said, “There’s nothing to worry about. Believe me, the other kids won’t be watching you, they’ll be all wrapped up in their own fun. Relax, and have a good time.”

Now the fateful time had come. That afternoon walking to the gym I felt queasy. For me, emotional distress is manifested in my guts, and they were now in the throes of spasm. My legs trembled as they buckled like my knees were made of rubber.

There was a pain growing in my belly as my clenched large intestine audibly howled. Oh, God, I’m gonna crap my pants if I don’t hit the john!

So, I took a sharp turn into the boys’ room, hurried into a stall and explosively released the load the instant I sat on the toilet. I remained sitting for a few minutes in a cold sweat, limp, leaning against the wall with my eyes closed.

Jesus, I thought, this must be how the holy martyrs felt before they walked into the Roman arenas. Save me from this pain, O Lord!

The outer door swung open and through the slit in the stall door I saw Larry Murphy, the class thug, stride in. I waited quietly while Larry relieved himself at the urinal.

I preferred to wait till the washroom was empty before emerging from the stall to gather my strength and either forge ahead to the dance, or bolt for the exit and run home—I was still considering the options. Larry had finished and began to wash his hands. Then a wad of wet paper towels sailed over the top of the stall and plopped on my forehead.

“Hey”, Larry barked, “You saving that for somebody?”

“What?”

He recognized my voice. “Wallace, you stupid doofus. Flush! It stinks in here!”

I flushed and finished up, but not too quickly, waiting for Larry to leave before exiting the stall. I shuffled to the basins to wash my hands, my knees still rubbery. After splashing my face with cold water, I felt some physical relief. I leaned on the basin and looked in the mirror for a moment. A scared, ashen face looked back at me. I was alarmed at how pitiful it looked. I asked myself, go into the gym, or leave?

It would be such a relief to go home right now. But no. I have to do this. I’ll look like a silly little kid if I don’t—especially now that Murphy knows I’m here and probably is already telling everybody ‘Hey, dumbass Wallace showed up!’

I took a deep breath and walked out to the gym. Clinging to the small hope my mom had given me; I told myself that the other kids would be busy focusing on themselves and not watching me. Of course. Why would they?

But what if they are watching? Waiting for goofy Steve to appear for an easy, instant laugh?

After eight years of being goofy, dumb, weird Steve, of not defying everybody’s expectations of me, I now needed to be taken seriously because this afternoon was different. Dancing with a girl wasn’t like some childish activity, it was an adult thing.

This afternoon, I didn’t want to be a walking joke, nor the weird kid on the periphery. I needed to be acknowledged as no less mature than anybody else in the room. To fit in and be no different than the rest of them. Or even, I dared to hope, be cool.

What is it about Murphy anyway, I thought. Everybody just accepts it: he’s one of the cool kids. But why? What’s so cool about him? He’s fat, he’s pretty dumb, he lisps, he only beats on kids who are smaller than him.

Nothing special about him at all except that he’s a huge jerk. But he’s cool and I’m not. It’s crazy: He just acts like, ‘Of course I’m cool’, and everybody buys it. Just acting, that’s all.

Then it dawned on me, so that’s what matters—acting. Not actually being something, but acting like you’re something. So why don’t I act? Maybe that’s it.

Maybe it’s just that easy. Maybe if I don’t let them see I’m panicking inside, if I act mature and confident, they’ll take me seriously—they won’t all be like, ‘oh, great, the clown showed up!’

I paused at the door, threw back my shoulders and entered the gym trying my best to affect confident nonchalance, almost swaggering, with one hand in a pocket, one eyebrow arched a bit, and wearing an ever-so-slight, knowing smirk. Suave. Like James Bond sauntering into a casino.

All I lacked was a tuxedo and a cigarette. As I strolled in, surveying the room, the other kids wore wide smiles—grinning even—when they made eye contact with me, and a sense of relief washed over me. I’m not the dork. The goof. They accept me!

I could hear giggles around me, but I gave them no thought. The isolated giggles grew into laughs and merged into a chorus of laughs. Even Sister Corda and Miss Riordan were laughing. Too bad I missed the joke, I thought.

Michelle was standing with a few of her girlfriends and walked toward her. As the girls watched me approach, they were resting hands on each other’s’ shoulders as if they were laughing so hard they’d fall down without mutual support.

“Oh Steve, you’re something else!” Michelle chortled.

“I don’t get it. What’s so funny?”

She pointed at my feet. “Look!”

I looked at my feet, then looked up at her and shrugged. “What?”

“Behind you!”

I turned and saw an eight-foot-long white serpentine tail trailing behind me; a strand of toilet paper had stuck to the bottom of my left shoe. Although the music played on, the dancing had stopped and everybody was circled around me, laughing. I stepped on the tail with my right foot and pulled my left foot free, then turned and rushed out of the gym as the crowd applauded.

I walked briskly down the corridor and stopped at my locker, my head bent, my eyes closed and leaned against the locker door. I remained that way for several minutes until I heard Michelle’s voice behind me.

“Hey. Aren’t you going to dance with me?”

I ignored the question and looked at her, my eyes watering. “I know they’re always gonna laugh at me, and I can take it. But you?”

“Oh c’mon. It was funny! Why are you being, like, so sensitive all of a sudden?”

“I’m tired of not being part of the crowd. I just want to fit in. Be like everybody else.”

“But you’re not like them, and I like that.”

“You just don’t get it. Maybe you never will.”

I opened my locker and gathered my books. “I’m going home.”

 

John Grantner from US is a lifelong visual artist and designer who has been crafting narratives and character studies. He has been a painter in oil and acrylic since his early teens. He’s also a fine art photographer and an abstract digital artist with a penchant for manipulating imagery to tell a story. Grantner is an observer of human behavior with a love of literature. When he escaped the workaday corporate treadmill, these traits came together to help him explore the written word as a creative medium.