Clowning Around

Every office has a clown. Generally a person earns this label by putting plastic fish in the water cooler or removing the ink cartridges from all of the pens in the office. Less often does the person in question actually dress in multi-colored polka-dots, sporting KISS make-up and disproportionately large shoes.

My office has that kind of clown.

There's this guy, Norm. Norm works in Compliance, which mostly means that he has very little sense of humor. I mean, even less than normal insurance people, whose best attempts at hilarity involve one too many “So a salesman, an actuary, and an adjuster walk into a bar…” jokes. (Seriously. I was in a meeting the other day, and the speaker made another one of those jokes, and everybody laughed like they were watching an anti-drug PSA by Barry Bonds, and I just looked around and said to myself, “Where am I?”)

At any rate, Norm is a strikingly surly and sarcastic man. He's ornery. He is not a person whose sense of humor makes other people comfortable. A simple “Good morning, Norm,” will earn you a rather biting, “Who says?” and if you try to shake this off with a wan and slightly uncomfortable smile, you’ll get, “What are you smiling at? Don’t you have work to do?” followed by an excruciatingly long pause before you turn back to your work.

Once I tried to head him off at the pass by thinking ahead:

“Morning, Norm.”

“Who says?”

“Who says what?”

“Who says it’s a good morning? Nothing I’ve seen today qualifies this morning as ‘good.’”

“I didn’t say ‘good morning.’”

“…”

“I said ‘Morning, Norm.’”

“…”

“It is still morning, isn’t it?”

“Are you new?”


My plan didn’t give me the last laugh so much as the last lingering moment of awkwardness, so I decided from now on I would just not talk to Norm until after noon. My point is that Norm is not exactly swimming in rainbows and puppies, so I was quite taken aback to learn that he is a professional clown.

Yep, Norm the Clown. He went to Clown School to get clownified, presumably received a clownish degree in Clownism or Clownology or some such thing, and does clowny things on weekends. At the office, he doesn't wear the get-up, which (since I've been scared of clowns ever since I was a child and my parents hung a terrifying painting of a manic-looking clown on my wall that made me forever suspicious of people with red hair and white skin, sabotaging several friendships with Irish people) is really best for everyone. I’ve seen pictures of him from the circus, and he is almost as intimidating there as he is at the office.

His clown name is “Haystack.” Sometimes he answers the phone in his clown voice, and he just…won’t…drop it. It freaks me out, and never fails to make me look around for hidden cameras.

He's also really short. I wonder if there are height regulations for clowns, in order to fit as many as possible into a small car. I'd really like to know that ratio.

On one of his benevolent days, I asked Norm his professional opinion on why so many people are afraid of clowns. He said, quite decisively, and without hesitation: "The make-up." I guess this begs the question, why continue to wear the scary make-up? But I’m scared enough of Norm without his make-up, so I’ll leave someone else to broach the subject.

Also, he said, when Stephen King's It was made into a movie, it dashed the reputations of clowns everywhere. The profound disappointment in his voice was funnier than any clownish thing I've heard him say. I wonder, when he approaches small children or twenty-something graphic designers at the circus and they run screaming to their mothers, if he turns his face to the sky and shakes his fist, yelling, “Damn you, Mr. King! Damn you…!”