White Clown

This may upset some people... and please let me say first that the baby (my daughter) was not crying - it was literally a 2 second photo shoot (he held her, she yelled that she didn't want to be held by a clown, the shot was taken, mommy took her). No tears, everything back to normal after 2 seconds. Also, the lipstick mark is from mommy, not from the clown as the photo may suggest.

A little story behind this photo: when I was a little boy, my pops and I lived with Circus Roncalli for a few months. Roncalli is one of the most famous old-fashioned circuses in the world and travels most of Europe; back in the old days when I was there they had lions, tigers, bears, all sorts of acrobats, clowns, etc. (now the exotic animals don't travel with the circus anymore as far as I know). The circus director is a long-time school friend of my dad's. Anyway, I got to see every show 2 or 3 times a day whilst we lived there for a few months and knew the routines and gags inside out after a while. The head-clown, a "white clown" [link] , had this gag where he'd ask the audience something possibly leading up to a funny joke. And I ruined it for him once by yelling out the punchline before he could. In response, he reached over the ring balustrade, grabbed me by the ear, pulled me out into the main arena and hence forth out the big curtained entrance. I was quite impressed to say the least.

To this day, the director of the circus still starts in cold sweats when he hears my name. One day the lion trainer brought me into the director's wagon, pulling his hair out in despair, asking my dad to stop me from trying to pet the lions through the cage bars, one skinny arm at a time.