Bozo to the Clown Circa April 30th, 1992 I’m sure you are all wondering why Bozo to the Clown and not just Bozo the Clown. Well, my son loved Bozo and somehow he and my little ”blender of English grammar” (blender as in 14 speed, Hamilton Beach, etc., etc.) Filipino wife got their combined verbiage off-track somehow and it became “Bozo to the Clown”. HEY – don’t ask – just go with it ‘cause I did and that is the main reason I can still somewhat fake sanity to this day. I mean, I have tried to analyze Bozo to a million ways from Sunday and there ain’t no damn way anyone could inject that preposition into the mix but, none other – we don’t need to go through the “three guess” thing do we, good – than my Filipino ex-wife. I mean, come on – she also came up with Hi po po tam us, so what do you expect? Miracles just ain’t gonna happen there. Anyway, my son, around the age of 2 or so, developed a fondness for Bozo, whose name was changed in the annals of history forevermore, to “Bozo to the Clown”. And yes, I know what you are thinking. “Why, Joey Smith, did you not just correct him? BECAUSE – IT WAS A FILIPINO CONSPIRACY – between him and my ex-wife. I tried, believe me. “Joey, why are you calling him Bozo to the Clown? It’s just Bozo the Clown, there ain’t no to or ta or te in there…” Joey, “Daddy, no talking. It Bozo TO the Clown. That what Bozo say. Bozo to the Clown. Now be quite so I can hear what Bozo saying.” “Hell fire, whatever you say. Hey, Candida, Did you get him started on this Bozo to the Clown crap. I would appreciate it if you would fall back to American custom on this one and tell him it is Bozo the Clown.” Candida, “I cannot do that. Are you crazy? You Americans so crazy! He will rebolt (rebolt) against his mother because he has settled on Bozo to the Clown – so who am I to correct him?” Do you even see, just a little bit, what I was up against? Gang tackling of the severest form. Anyway, I’m out and about on my normal job duties one day and I hear a commercial about Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus coming to the Miami Sports Arena with a special appearance by Bozo to the Clown. I nearly drove straight in to Biscayne Bay, I swear. I was looking all over frantically for my little window-cracking tool (a special tool experts recommended you have in your car if you lived in Miami due to the risk of being involved in a submerged auto accident. Every which way you turned down there, you would run into canals, causeways, rivers and bays. When a vehicle is submerged, it is physically impossible to break any glass because you cannot develop enough acceleration underwater so you put this little tool up to the glass, press the button on the end and a little plunger is released with around 50 psi of pressure – enough to shatter any automobile glass, even bulletproof glass.) in the event that I could not regain control of my company issued vehicle, resulting in flying off of the 395 Causeway Bridge straight into the depths of Biscayne Bay. I was already starting to hold my breath but I managed to recover control of the vehicle at the last second. So, Bozo to the Clown – my son’s favorite childhood personality, was coming to the Miami Arena. Well, all I can say is that MY boy was gonna be front and center when Bozo to the Clown came around! Fast-forward three months and there we are – front row, center of the main ring sitting two feet from the little blocks that are about 1 foot high that make up the circle. If Bozo to the Clown was standing on the blocks, my boy could have reached out and touched him. So I tell my ex-wife, “Honey, Man the fort ‘cause I got a meeting with Bozo himself backstage. Be back in a flash. I round up Bozo backstage and I say “Hey Bozo, can I have a word with you. He was a clown, of course, so he just bee-bopped right over to me and said in the Bozo voice, “Haaaaayyyyy, Whaaaats upppp?” I said “Listen man, my son thinks you are God himself, and worships you. Hopefully, we will be able to get him back on track and praying to the REAL God but for now, you are him. Get it. So, it is his birthday and he is sitting in the front row, come here Bozo, see – right over there – in the blue shirt.” “Shurrrrrreee.” Yeah, OK, whatever – listen – you don’t impress me a whole lot chief – you’re a clown and kids think clowns are funny right. Good deal. Now, is there anyway that you could swing by in front of him and stop and focus on him and say something like “Weeellll, its Jooooweeee Smith, our luttttulll birthdaaayyy boweeeee! That was good, right? See that’s what I’m saying – a clowns a clown but not to him. Your God, I’m his father, and that’s his mother sitting next to him. So Bozo, do you think this is doable. He said “Shurrrre”. I tried to give him a tip but he wouldn’t take it ‘cause he said that was his job – making kidddies happy. That sounded a little freaky to me so I was like “yeah, OK. HEY, by the way, when you say your name you have to say it is “Bozo to the Clown” and he looked at me like “What?” And I said, you see that his mother is Filipino, right and her grammar ain’t all that good – it actually sucks. And I cannot help that they are involved in a conspiracy of the blackest nature to rename you “Bozo to the Clown” but just go with it or you will end up in a room next to me at the local Psycho hospital. Besides, no one will even notice. I could not believe it but he said he would and the rest is history. So I returned to my seat as I was giving him the thumbs up and telling him to make sure he was loud and played it up and that he was “Bozo to the Clown”, you know, for the kiddie. So circus intermission rolls around and all of the sudden (little Joey had no idea that Bozo to the Clown was even in Miami ‘cause it was going to be a surprise, and that is exactly what it was a surprise) the lights go down and one spotlight comes on and shines on the curtains to the backstage area and all of the sudden just Bozo’s head popped out, nothing else, just his head and he’s yelling like a fool “Hey girls and boys, it’s Bozo”. And the place goes nuts and Joey is damn near floating about two feet above his chair screaming “Bozo to the Clown, Bozo to the Clown, Bozo to the Clown”, just absolutely ecstatic over the whole thing. I do believe that was the happiest I had ever seen that kid…………UNTIL Bozo, who was skipping around the inner part of the ring, got to him. And just like I had instructed him to in the vein of Cecil B. Demille as he instructed Charlton Heston during the filming of “The Ten Commandments” years earlier, he stopped right in front of the birthday boy, jumped up on the ring blocks with those big-ass clown feet of his, bent over to the point where he was about two feet from Joey’s face and screamed out “Hey Joey the birthday boy – It’s Bozo to the Clown”. I was living large in a moment of pure fatherhood ecstasy and, as I looked at Joey, then back at Bozo – it dawned on me about a second or two later that something was not right so I whirled my gaze back to Joey and the child looked like he had come face to face with Satan himself and was in a state of absolute shock. He started screaming bloody murder, got up out of his seat and climbed up on the ring blocks as Bozo was in kind of a state of horror himself and jumped down to give him room, jumped onto the dirt ring floor and started running across to the other side by himself screaming and yelling, “Get Bozo to the Clown away daddy, get him away!” At that moment, that was the only sound that could be heard. Otherwise, it was so quite in that arena that you could have heard a mouse peeing on a cotton ball backstage. So I yell to my ex-wife “You go get him and I’ll get Bozo’s ass out of here”. But all I heard was Bozo saying “Ah, man, I don’t think she heard you” as I wheeled around in her direction and lo and behold, he scared her worse than he did Joey and she was running around the ring in the opposite direction and I am like WiTF is going on. I look at Bozo and by this time I am pissed and I said “Jesus Christ Bozo, that was a little damn strong don’t you think? But he said, and I have to give him credit “I did exactly what you told me to do, I even said my name was Bozo to the Clown, which is probably gonna buy me some grief with the Trade name owners.” I looked at him and said “Screw the Trade name owners (actually I may have used the f word there) and help me coral my kid that you just scared to death.” So, to bring things to a conclusion, I went and rounded up Joey and told Bozo to stay the hell away before he scarred the child’s fragile mind even more than he already had. As for my nutty ex-wife, Joey and I did not hook back up with her until we got to the car about two blocks away. At least she had the sense to remember where the car was. I was like ‘Hey, Wonder Woman, thanks for bailing on me and she was actually sobbing her eyes out, partly because “Bozo to the Clown” scared the s$%t out of her too but mainly because she had run off and abandoned her child. I was telling her “Jesus, I could have been kicked in the head by an elephant or run over by one of those Mexican motorcycle riders and our son would have had to raise himself like Jodie Foster in the movie “Nell.” Needless to say, Joey did not want to continue on out to his birthday dinner so we called it a day. In addition, he never, ever mentioned Bozo’s name or watched his show again.
Posted on: Tue, 17 Jun 2014 12:39:57 +0000
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