Diary of a Clown/ Elmo's visit to a Shrink
By Susan Zwirn aka Polkadots the Clown

When I’m not clowning around at children’s birthday parties, singing telegrams, and corporate events, I might be seen parading around as a hard headed furry character, as well as a princess or holiday character. A typical character show might include dancing with the kids, balloon twisting, song games, or just posing for pictures. One afternoon, my most popular furry character Elmo, and I were asked to take a break from our usual routine when I got a call from one of my agents saying he needed me to take Elmo to a Psychiatrist’s office. In this case, I wasn’t needed at all except to deliver Elmo to a shrink to use for therapy for an eight year old patient who has a horrific fear of characters. My first thought when hearing this was,” eight years old?” “Isn’t that kind of old to be scared of costumed characters?” At that age, you would just assume that they know that there’s a human being inside the hard headed furry character. In any event, I thought this would be easy money. All I had to do was pack up Elmo in a laundry bag, and travel about ten minutes from my NY City Apt., hand Elmo, to the shrink, and sit in the office for an hour with the boy’s mother. To my surprise, this Elmo-phobic, eight year old boy turned out to be way beyond his years. The opposite of what I expected. In the 10 minutes I had while hanging out with him and his mom in the waiting room, I felt like I was having a conversation with a very mature fourteen year old boy. There wasn’t the slightest babyish quality about him at all. When the Doctor finally came out, I handed Elmo (in the laundry bag) to him, and the three went behind closed doors. The boy’s mom, an MD, explained to me that this is a problem her son has always had. It becomes a real nuisance when not only going to birthday parties and events, and a clown or furry costume character is walking around, even worse, if one is walking around on the street doing a store pro-mo he’ll just take off to wherever! It suddenly dawned on me…was I actually contributing to this boy’s (and boys and girls like him) fear by doing what I do for a living? Although people used to hire me a lot back then as a hard headed furry character, there are usually a couple of kids at a party that cry and or quiver at the sight of me (whoever I’m dressed as, that is). I waited out the session with the boy’s mom chatting about a number of things. When the hour was up, the door opened. First, the Doctor walked out, followed by Elmo (the boy dressed as Elmo, that is). My eyes started welling up with tears so much, I never even noticed the mom’s reaction! I mean, the very thought of the thing that caused this bright eight year old boy his biggest fear, might have actually cured him! Unfortunately, the shrink put an end to that thought by saying that this is one of at least a few more sessions. The next visit is going to be a total surprise to the boy. Next week, a costume character will physically walk in. In the weeks to come, more mystery characters will arrive as well. Suddenly, this was more than just easy money. This experience ended up paying off in more ways than one. It still is today, as a matter of fact. I now no longer do Elmo jobs; I sold Elmo, by the way. It doesn’t end there. I also completely revamped my clown costume as well, toning down my makeup and replacing my scary green wig with a cutesy red headed “Shirley Temple” wig. My costumes are more girlish and kid friendly as well. Oh yea, there’s always going to be kids out there who are scared of clowns and characters, but this is one less scary character they have to worry about. A good number of the time when I get a scaredy cat at one of my parties, they end up being almost impossible to get rid of by the end of the party, especially when they’ve seen the other kids’ reaction to me. That eight year old boy is not the only one who had therapy that day!