Clowns make me laugh. Even if they’re not funny, they make me laugh. I don’t know if it’s the face paint or the fake hair. Maybe it’s the big shoes or ridiculous costumes they wear, but there’s just something about clowns that makes me laugh. They always seem so happy, always ready with a joke or a smile, never worried about making a fool of themselves. I think the world would be a terrible place without clowns, don’t you?

I remember the first time I ever saw a clown. It was at my sister’s third birthday party. She had all her friends over, which for a three year old only meant about ten kids. But no matter how many of my sister's friends there were running around, there were always too many. There was a knock at the door and mum took me with her to answer it.

All I saw at first were the big bright yellow shoes. Then as I slowly moved my head upwards I saw the blue socks pulled on the outside of the green trousers.  Already I knew I had never seen anyone like this before. The yellow and white striped shirt wasn’t too much out of the ordinary, but then I got to the face. I saw a white face with a blue star around one eye and a yellow moon around the other. The mouth looked like mum’s did sometimes when she slipped with the lipstick. Then, right in the middle of his face was a bright red nose.

This was all too much for me and I snuggled back into mum’s arms.  The next thing I knew, she had let him in the door and he was peering at me with a big smile on his face. I shoved my hand out to push him away and I hit him right in the middle of the nose. To my surprise, and to my mother’s as she nearly dropped me, a large “HONK” came from the clown.

I thought this was extremely funny and burst into laughter. That surprised me, because I had been about to burst into tears. Seeing that his honking nose had amused me, he pulled a toy hammer out of his bag and continued to hit himself on the nose, each hit sounding a honk. When he felt this had worn out he started walking straight into walls and doors with his nose constantly honking.

This was all within the time it had taken to walk through the house to the backyard where the party was. I couldn’t control my laughter. I had never seen somebody so funny in my life. Mum led him out into the backyard where he was suddenly surrounded by adoring three year olds, all wanting to punch his nose.

I didn’t see much of him after that. Not that I can remember anyway, because mum took me back inside while he was performing. But I do remember that before he left he came in and said goodbye to me, letting me honk his nose one more time. That was really special. I think I decided then and there that I wanted to be a clown when I grew up. I couldn’t imagine anything better than to be able to go around honking my nose at people and making them laugh.

Of course, since then I have wanted to be a doctor, on the police force, a lawyer and a movie star. But clowns have always been special. Ever since that day, whenever I had the chance to see a clown, I would make sure I was there. Whether that meant sneaking into the circus or a birthday party I wasn’t exactly invited to, you could bet I wouldn’t be far away.

I’ve seen clowns with red noses, clowns with big noses, clowns whose noses squirted water. I’ve seen tall clowns, short clowns, fat clowns, skinny clowns. But most of all I’ve seen funny clowns.

I couldn’t believe it one time when I was at a friend’s birthday party. His parents had organised for this clown to come and do some balloon tricks and stuff. I was so excited when I saw the car pull up in the driveway. But when the doorbell rang and he answered it to find the clown there, he ran away. He wouldn’t go near the clown. The funnier the clown became and the more the rest of us laughed, the more scared my friend became. In the end he burst out in tears and his father sent the clown away.

Even when the clown did his ‘sad face’ as he was leaving he looked funny. But it wasn’t until the other week that I ever thought about what clowns were like when all the make-up was gone and they weren’t dressed in funny clothes. I guess I had just never seen clowns as real people. I thought they were like teachers who surely just got put away in cupboards at the end of the school day.

Maybe there was this clown closet that all clowns were put in when they weren’t being used. I thought about that, but it sounded too mean. After thinking a while longer, I was sure there must have been a clown land. A place where everybody was a clown. Where the smallest shoe size was twenty and people greeted you by honking your nose.

If you were tired of your nose, you’d just take it and trade it in at the second-nose shop. I liked this idea, but I knew it wasn’t true. I knew that clowns must have been real people underneath the hair, the make-up and the noses. I wondered what they were like. I mean, were they funny without all the props?

I had seen so many clowns in my life, but I’d never seen one out of character. I wanted to meet a real live clown when he wasn’t being a clown. That is how I found something I never thought I’d see, a sorrowful clown.

The circus was in town, and after begging for a week, mum said I could go down there and hang around on the weekend. Friday night I couldn’t get to sleep I was so excited. I knew that the circus was just one sleep away. But it ended up being about five sleeps away with the amount of times I woke up in the middle of the night.

At six o’clock on Saturday morning I was up and dressed. Mum made me have a shower, which I thought was really stupid considering I was going to the circus for the day. Mum also made me have breakfast, which I didn’t protest against as much as the shower, because I was quite hungry.

It wasn’t until eight o’clock that mum finally said to get in the car and she would drive me down to the circus. But then I had to wait even longer for my sister to get ready. She didn’t want to go to the circus, but mum was paying her to look after me for the day. I also thought this was stupid, because in my opinion she needed more looking after than I did. But I think mum just wanted us both in the same place for the day. Besides, I knew it was the only way I was going to be allowed to go.

So eventually at nine o’clock we pulled up at the big top. I had never been to a circus so big before. They had set the big top up in the car park of a large shopping centre and the circus seemed even bigger than the shopping centre. There was the big top, the largest of the tents, but there were also smaller tents around. Then there were a whole heap of caravans. I suppose those were where all the performers lived.

On the other side of the big top were the animal enclosures. Most of the animals were still lying down or asleep, because the show didn’t start until the afternoon. But some were being fed, or were in the big top already practising with their masters. There were lions and tigers and bears. There was a whole outside arena set up where some horses were going through their paces. There were monkeys screaming in unison from their cages. The largest of the animals were the two elephants. They had a small area behind the horse arena which was far away from everything else.

Each elephant was chained to a metal pole stuck into the ground. It looked quite funny, because the elephants were easily strong enough to walk away, pole and all. But I knew why they didn’t, because I had been told at a different circus. You see, when the elephants are babies, they are tied to the poles. At first they try and try to pull away from the poles and go their own way. But no matter how hard they try, the poles do not move. The elephants get exhausted and stop pulling. They get to a stage after a while that they don’t even try to pull on the poles anymore. So when the elephants grow up to be big and strong, easily strong enough to break away, they don’t, because they think that the pole is too strong.

Mum drove off, and as soon as the car was out of sight, my sister turned to me. I knew what was coming. ‘Okay, here’s the deal kiddo. I’m meeting some friends at the shops. I’ll meet you back here at five.’ I hated it when she called me kiddo. Like she was so much older than me or something. I reckon if we had have been twins and she was born two minutes before me, she still would have called me kiddo.

I looked at her with fake tears in my eyes, holding out my hand. ‘Okay, here’s five bucks you little brat.’ If she was going to call me kiddo, I was getting my cut of her pay. I figured if she was getting paid to look after me and she wasn’t really doing that, then she was going to have to pay me off to stop me telling mum. It worked out okay for both of us really. She got to go to the shops and I got to stay at the circus.

I watched her run off to the shops as if she was scared of the circus. Who knows, maybe she was. I still had a couple of hours to walk around before the show was due to start. I liked walking around circuses when there was nobody about. First I walked past all of the different animal enclosures. Then I looked at the different stalls that were set up like the fortune teller and the shooting gallery that would be opened later. There were a lot of these.

This wasn’t just a circus, this was a travelling show. I was in luck. There were sure to be many clowns around. This was what I really wanted to do before show time. I walked casually around the caravans. It was like a caravan park there were so many. It would have been easy to get lost and that is why this was so important. I wanted to find out where the clowns’ caravans were so I could follow them back after the show.

There wasn’t much movement anywhere. I figured everyone must have been getting ready. I found the clown caravans, they were easy enough to pick. They were the ones with the red noses on the doors. I thought this was my chance to get a sneak preview of a real clown. I found one caravan, out of view from the walkway. I stepped up onto the step to see if I could look in through the window. Then WHACK! The door opened and threw me off the step into the dust.

Looking up from the ground I saw a clown in shock. I don’t know if I had ever seen a clown in real shock before. But it didn’t last long. He took one look at me and grabbed a stethoscope from around his neck. He pretended he was a doctor and started listening to my breathing. Then he moved the stethoscope to my head, my elbows and my knees. I didn’t have the heart to tell him he was wasting his time. When he got to my left knee he found that I had cut it falling to the ground.

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a handkerchief. I knew what was to come. Coloured handkerchief after coloured handkerchief. Finally he pulled out a single handkerchief and wrapped it around my knee. ‘That should do the job’ he said with a smile.

By this time I had totally forgotten how much my knee was hurting and was just sitting there beaming at this clown. He was a short clown with blue hair. He wore colourful clothes underneath a white coat. I guess I was lucky I had bumped into a doctor clown. Or to be more accurate, he had bumped into me. ‘Hey kiddo, would you like to come and watch us practise?’

I don’t think that was a question I even needed to answer with the smile it brought to my face. I didn’t even mind that he had called me kiddo. I followed him through the caravans until we got to a back entrance of the big top. There was a guy dressed in a uniform at the door. I thought I was about to be stopped. But to my surprise, my clown friend said ‘It’s all right John, he’s with me.’

When the man heard this he pulled a rubber stamp out of his pocket and told me to put my hand out. On the back of my hand I had stamped ‘VIP’. The clown told me this stood for ‘Victim In Pain’, but I knew what it really meant.

He led me down a corridor to a group of seats marked ‘reserve’ and told me to take my pick. I sat in the front row, of course, and watched about ten clowns practise their acts. I thought they were all very funny, but my clown was the funniest. He was the main character who had to go around and fix all of the other clowns up after they had been knocked over. He always just missed being knocked over himself. The timing had to be perfect.

I was watching so intently that I didn’t notice other people start to come in. Before long there were people filling up the whole big top. The clowns went off and the lights dimmed. There was a hush of silence as the music started. Then the clowns ran out again. This time they were even better than in practice. As they ran out a loud voice boomed over the speakers ‘Doctor Bob and his accidental clowns’. Wow, I thought, my clown really was the leading clown.

I sat through the circus and enjoyed all of it, especially when the clowns came back on at the end. Then, as quickly as it had started, all the lights came back on and people were clapping and moving out of the big top. I looked at my watch, good, three thirty, I still had time. I walked down the same corridor I had come in and saw the clowns just leaving as I did. Dr Bob started walking towards his caravan and I followed him. I caught up to him just as he opened the door. ‘Hello again kiddo, what can I do for you?’

‘Nothing, I just wanted to say how great you were Dr Bob.’

He smiled and said ‘Thankyou’, patting me on the head and somehow making a honking sound while doing it.

‘Can I, can I watch you take your make-up off?’

He was very puzzled by this question. But to my relief he said I could. He showed me around to the other side of his caravan where there was a basin and a mirror. Then he went into the caravan, coming out a minute later without fake hair or red nose. I think he saw my shock, because he asked me if I really wanted to stay.

‘Please let me stay,’ I begged. He smiled, the make-up still making him look funny. I was surprised at how easily the make-up came off in the soapy water. It wasn’t too long before the clown had been transformed into a middle-aged man. He disappeared into his caravan and came out a minute later wearing jeans and a tee-shirt. So this was what a real live clown looked like.

I didn’t know what I felt at that moment. I had achieved my mission, but I somehow expected I would have found out something much more exciting than this. Doctor Bob looked at me and I saw he was trying to hide a frown. I realised it wasn’t just water on his face, he was holding back tears. There is no worse sight in this world than a clown crying.

‘What’s wrong’ I asked in a very concerned voice.

‘I never should have let you come back here’ he said gloomily.

‘What do you mean?’

‘I’ve ruined it for you. I could see from the start that you loved clowns. I could see the happiness in your eyes when I bumped into you. Now you know the truth about clowns. I’ve ruined clowns for you. Now when you see a clown you’ll just see a middle aged man, and there’s nothing funny about that.’

‘No I won’t’

‘Look kid, I appreciate what you’re trying to do. But the truth is, when you’re a clown, people love you. But when you take the make-up, the nose and the clothes away, nobody wants to know you.’

‘That’s not true Doctor Bob. People don’t love you because you’re a clown. It’s not because of all the funny things you do. It’s because you want to do them. It’s because of who you are. Besides, I still want to know you.’

I really meant it too. This wasn’t just a clown who had made me laugh. He was a person who had fixed up my knee, got me front row seats to the circus, let me watch him transform back into a real person and still hadn’t told me off for peeking into his caravan in the first place. I lent over and patted him on the head as he had done to me earlier, making my own honking sound. We both laughed.

I gave him a hug, but knocked my knee while doing it. He took the handkerchief off my knee and washed it up properly. He wanted to put a proper bandage on it, but I wouldn’t let him. I wanted the handkerchief and I think he understood. We spent the rest of the afternoon painting my face. Soon I was the clown and I was making him laugh with all the things I was doing. Just then I looked at my watch and it was five thirty.

I knew all hell would break lose if I wasn’t back there when mum arrived to pick us up. My sister would already be annoyed that I wasn’t there to meet her. I followed Doctor Bob through the maze of caravans to where I said I would meet my sister. I saw from a distance that my mum was already there looking worried. My sister was crying, she had obviously already got into trouble for losing me.

Mum saw us coming towards them and ran to me. I guess a mother can tell her children even when they are wearing face paint. I was going to go into a big speel about being lost, but I didn’t need to. Mum got down to her knees and hugged me to her.

‘You must be the mum this little one’s been trying to find,’ said Doctor Bob with a smile. ‘I’m Doctor Roberts. I hope you don’t go too hard on him. It’s a big place for a little person here, easy to get lost.’

Mum was just happy that she had found me. My sister was staring at me. She knew I wasn’t going to get in trouble. I smiled at her, because I knew she had. Mum turned to Doctor Bob and said ‘Thankyou Doctor Roberts, I was getting so worried. You never know what type of people hang around a place like this. I was sure he must have run off with some clown.’

I winked at Dr Bob from under my mum’s arm. He winked back and smiled. If only she knew.