One version of my potted biography running around out there alleges:<\/p>\n
He has attended clown school and the University of California at Berkeley.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Leaving aside for the moment the obvious question of whether this refers to two separate institutions, or just one\u2014as certain alumni of a certain pine-tree-obsessed farm school have suggested\u2014I should clarify that I did not attend a\u00a0full-time<\/em>\u00a0course in the art of clowning. (Just as well, really. I don\u2019t mind following in the footsteps of famous Poles\u2014but since I don\u2019t have a back yard, I can\u2019t really emulate John Wayne Gacy.)<\/p>\n
What I\u00a0did<\/em>\u00a0do was attempt to learn clowning for the Great Y Circus. Being an idiot at the time\u2014er, a\u00a0younger\u00a0<\/em>idiot, I should say\u2014I figured that the primary skills involved in clowning were things like balloon animals, distance and accuracy in pie hurling, inflicting lifelong traumas and phobias on small children, and the like. However, while these are\u00a0important<\/em>, they are also fairly easy to learn. Hence, in order to weed out the people who weren\u2019t going to make it, the instructors started with the\u00a0hard<\/em>\u00a0stuff.<\/p>\n
I could handle myself on the trampoline\u2014more or less. That is to say, I did not at any point go flying off the trampoline skull-first to impact with the ground hard enough to cause injury. Nothing permanent, at least, although some forms of brain damage are difficult to image\u2026 I was never going to be a star, but those also serve who can about manage a backflip on a good day.<\/p>\n
That left juggling.<\/p>\n
Now, it has been said that with enough practice, any idiot can learn how to juggle. This turned out to be true in my case. After a few weeks of chasing balls all over the gym, I had mastered the basic fountain and a few minor and umimpressive tricks\u2014bouncing balls off the walls, the floor, the backs of the heads of people I didn\u2019t like much, and so on. Time for the next level: rings and pins. Rings were tricky, but I made progress. Pins, on the other hand\u2026<\/p>\n
Now, your basic \u201cpin\u201d is about the same size and shape as a bowling pin\u2014but, mercifully, hollow. The fundamental move is flipping it up into the air\u2014it goes up, the broad end rotating towards you, comes down, and you catch it by the skinny end with your other hand.<\/p>\n
Mental block. I couldn\u2019t let go of the pin.<\/p>\n
This didn\u2019t happen every time\u2014but\u00a0often<\/em>. I\u2019d do the move, but I\u2019d hold onto the pin\u2014thus constraining where it could go, which meant I\u2019d bring it all the way up and hit myself in the forehead with the broad end. I spent\u00a0days<\/em>\u00a0doing this. I raised a\u00a0bruise<\/em>. The instructors\u2014who would have fitted into\u00a0Full Metal Jacket<\/em>\u00a0just fine, since there\u2019s nobody as dour as someone whose\u00a0job<\/em>\u00a0it is to try to teach people to be funny\u2014tried yelling at me. That didn\u2019t work. So they swiched to plan B, which was yelling\u00a0louder<\/em>.<\/p>\n
Around the time they got to Plan E\u2014yelling, with flecks of foam\u2014I gave up. Besides, I could see that even if I\u00a0did<\/em>\u00a0learn not to hit myself in the head, the next level involved juggling while riding a unicycle. I inferred that if I was sufficiently uncoordinated to brain myself with a club, trying to juggle while balancing on my perenium put me at grave risk of permanent sterility.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s why I had to go to Berkeley and get a degree in computer science. I wasn\u2019t smart enough to be a clown.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
One version of my potted biography running around out there alleges: He has attended clown school and the University of California at Berkeley. Leaving aside for the moment the obvious question of whether this refers to two separate institutions, or just one\u2014as certain alumni of a certain pine-tree-obsessed farm school have suggested\u2014I should clarify that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/stephan-zielinski.com\/dwa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/stephan-zielinski.com\/dwa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/stephan-zielinski.com\/dwa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/stephan-zielinski.com\/dwa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/stephan-zielinski.com\/dwa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=250"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/stephan-zielinski.com\/dwa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":363,"href":"http:\/\/stephan-zielinski.com\/dwa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250\/revisions\/363"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/stephan-zielinski.com\/dwa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=250"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/stephan-zielinski.com\/dwa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=250"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/stephan-zielinski.com\/dwa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=250"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}