The Hands of a Clown

When I was in the 9^th grade I broke my leg because I thought I could do a back flip off the bleachers in the Gym. I was supposed to be warming up for the first day of Wrestling practice and I was full of myself after I had already proven my skills in regular PE class and the coach assured me I would win a spot on the team if I tried out. I ended up on crutches with a full leg cast for 3 months and that was the end of my sporting career.

One of the projects during my recovery was an oversized paint-by-number of a sad clown with his hands clasped in his lap. It took a long time to finish and as I proceeded I got better so the edges were rough but by the time I got to the middle it started to look good. Everyone who saw the finished painting remarked how lifelike the hands were and even I had to admit they had a spooky quality that far exceeded the rest of the painting. I remember working with particular detail on that part of the picture but not because of my skill but rather the genius that drew the lines for me to follow.

The rest of the painting was unremarkable if not below average, maybe that's what made the hands stand out as being so good but only compared to the rest of the story. Isn't that the way with most of our accomplishments? We may get one part perfect but that fact gets lost in the mess when the rest of the project is only mediocre and disguising all our best efforts. A true artist is gifted from beginning to end but the rest of us have to work our way up to greatness and that means we are just ordinary for most of the journey.

Even Sherlock Holmes was never as interested in the content of the character as he was in the character’s contents. He would get more information from an inspection of the suspects hands than the interrigation. You can tell more about a clown by his real hands than by his real face. Just like a Hollywood actor, you won't find the truth in their face after the Doctors finish lifting but you can still find the real age by looking at their feet, or hands. The next time you wonder why someone won’t look you in the eye, be careful they aren’t looking at your hands instead.

The Drama Department : 1960’s

There was a long standing tradition of Theater in our family with my parents first meeting while playing parts in the play The Taming of the Shrew at Chico State. My Dad went on to lead the drama department to the annual Shakespeare Festival in the fall and the One Act Play tournament every spring. For such a small town Chester California had a top quality stage that saw regular use throughout the school year. The Drama Department was just as respectable as the Athletics Department back then but now it has been cut from most curriculum budgets. Maybe Glee will start to change that…

My first experience on stage was at the age of 6 in the first grade Christmas Pageant and all we had to do was walk around in a circle doing an Indian War Dance while holding our tomahawk in one hand and clapping our mouths with the other. We had plenty of rehearsals but we failed to have a full costume dress rehearsal so at show time I was surprised to find my burlap sack of a costume kept falling down around my ankles. Suddenly I had to decide which hand to use for which purpose. I was so determined that the show must go on that I had to let go of the pants every so often to perform the other acting bits. I was vaguely aware of the laughter but too young to appreciate the brief glimpse of fame.

For the Second Grade show I was happy to accept the job of opening and closing the curtain. It was a relief to work behind the scenes and it was still a big deal for a little kid to open and close that big velvet curtain. My next onstage effort was in the third grade production of Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm. I was given the added responsibility of running the lights in addition to pulling the curtains. I felt like a real stage-hand and truly enjoyed the job. With two banks of lights including the house lights over the audience it felt like real power. I wanted to stay back stage for the remainder of my theatrical career but the next year I was convinced to play the Third Wise Men and had to sing We Three Kings for the Fourth Grade Holiday Show.

In the fifth grade we were assigned Frosty the Snowman for the Christmas show. We spent a couple of weeks building the Snowman Costume and I was offered the part of getting inside but for some stupid reason I turned it down and instead took simple role in the chorus. So my friend got the role and right away I had regrets and wished I had taken that part. It is true that I suffered claustrophobia and maybe I was worried about getting too hot in that big suit but the real truth is I was afraid of looking goofy.

The next year the Sixth Grade put on a production of Scrooge and I was not going to regret anything this time around and by practicing for the audition I was lucky enough to get the lead role. By then I was ready to live the part and I was good, maybe too good. I got rave reviews but after all these years I wonder if I would have been better off with the Frosty role instead of Scrooge?

Education in the 1960’s

Way back then schools were simple compared to all the options available today. There was no home schooling, no alternative school, no church school, there was just the one public school and we still learned enough to get by. Now days hardly any kids go to the public schools with all the virtual classrooms out there we will soon end up with virtual teachers and finally virtual students.

The most import class when I was recess because there were so many. We had an Early Morning recess before class started and then the regular morning recess right after show and tell. Next came Lunch recess which was followed by the afternoon recess and then finally we had the after school recess while waiting for the bus. With all those recesses we needed some down time to catch our wits but first we had to spend an hour each on Art, Music and PE which left precious little time for the reading, writing and ‘rithmetic.

The favorite high tech device at school was the Projector. There were two variety of projector, the common overhead projector and the motorized movie projector. Even though there was an overhead projector in every room they were still only used on irregular occasions for special material and the one shared movie projector was only dragged out for super special occasions such as holidays or snow days when we couldn’t go outside for the many recesses.

In between projector use the next most high tech tool in our classrooms was the mimeograph machine. It took a simple piece of carbon paper and turned it into a real printer with a simple cranking motion, no electricity required. They should have kept it around just for the exercise.

The real work horse back then was the chalk board. This ever present wall of green (sometimes brown or black, later replaced by white) was used by every teacher without exception. How else was the substitute going to communicate their name. The chalk board was a combination bulletin board and shared display. Every student took their turn at the board just for the fun of it. For us there was nothing more educational than that clicking and scraping sound of a teacher conveying knowledge on a chalkboard.

Cleaning the chalkboard was a privilege that all the wannabe students would fight for. You could tell how productive a class was by the size of the chalk dust cloud produced when the chosen kids would clap the erasers every afternoon. The gym class had no cloud at all while the science classes consistently put out a veritable fog and in between were various clouds of a size in direct proportion to the quantity of the learning achieved in that room.

The sound of chalk scratching on the chalkboard has been replaced with the squeaking of magic markers on whiteboards and now there is no way to measure the teachers productivity.