Diary of a ClownGet off of My Case
By Susan Zwirn AKA Polkadots the Clown


One of the reasons I like to keep my jobs close to home, is that the out of town jobs (especially the ones in The Bronx and Brooklyn) tend to start late and of course end late, which means I’m walking from the Subways late at night and sometimes in not the safest neighborhoods. Not to put down certain ethnicities’, but for some reason, Spanish, Indians and Blacks (not all, but a lot of the ones I’ve encountered) tend to not only start their parties late, but they’re notorious for arriving late as well. In other words, 7:00 pm can mean 8:00pm or even 9:00 pm, which can mean, I’m out of there close to or at mid night, not to mention what time I get home! It’s especially hard when I have a morning job the next day. I spend over an hour the night before packing for my jobs. I don’t even want to talk about what time I finally make it to bed!
On one such occasion, I was to do a Princess party in the South Bronx. The party was to start at 8:00 PM but as almost always, the guests and birthday girl didn’t arrive until 9:30, which meant I didn’t finish my show until about 11:00. By the time I packed up my stuff and was ready to change, it was about 11:20 PM. At that time (believe it or not) guests were still just arriving. Now this is a Birthday party for a five year old girl mind you, not a college frat party!

After getting my stuff packed up, I went into the only bathroom in this small overcrowded house to get changed out of my costume. After about five minutes of changing, comes this loud banging at the door of the bathroom I was in. “How rude!, I thought and just kept doing my thing. When I Finally made it out of the closet of a bathroom with all of my bulky attire in my hands, the amount of people had not only doubled from the time I went in, but gathered around my suitcase was massive screaming and kayos! I managed to look over a few shoulders only to find what appeared to be an elderly woman lying on the ground with her head and one of her arms on my suitcase! The next thing I know, the paramedics are roping off the area.
The woman on my suitcase, turned out to be the eighty something year old Great Grandmother of the Birthday girl. One of the twelve year old Grand Daughters, who was standing next to me was so traumatized by seeing her Grand Mother in this state, that she past out. So now they had to rope off my area as well, in order to tend to the new patient, leaving me and 80 hysterical guests all squished together like Sardines!
Now we’re going on like 12:30 midnight with this lady sprawled out on my suitcase getting a zillion repetitions of CPR without what looked to be any motion coming from her!
Realizing what time it was and where I was (not a safe neighborhood to be in past midnight), I realized I had to get out of there, after all, who was going to be willing to walk me to the subway with all that going on?! In order to get out of there, I would have to convince one of the cops and or paramedics into letting me get my suitcase. So, here goes….”Excuse me sir, I sympathize with what’s going on here, but is it at all possible that I can get that suitcase?” I asked while pointing to my suitcase. The six foot three Police officer replied, “Sorry mam that area is off limits. After a couple of more attempts of trying to convince New York’s finest into getting my suitcase, I very sternly approached one of the officers “LOOK!” “It’s like this…If you don’t let me get my suitcase soon, you’re probably going to have MY death to deal with too, if I have to get back downtown on the subway at this un-Godly hour!!”He nervously looked around at the crowd when he heard me say the word death and attempted to calm me down, which wasn’t going to happen. They finally took this lifeless body off of my suitcase, and without anyone’s permission, I grabbed my suitcase and fighting my way through all of the kayos, ran outside. The mother of the Birthday Girl was standing outside crying. I tried my best to calm her down, saying “Don’t worry; she’s in good hands now”. Luckily, the company I did the job for was prepaid by the client on a credit card, so I didn’t have to humiliate myself any further by trying to get money from her when she was in such a fragile state.

Unsurprisingly, (and thanks goodness, safely) it was close to 3:00 AM, when I finally made it home. I had a hard time convincing my boyfriend the next day that I was coming from a five year old girl’s birthday party at that hour! It was through my boyfriend’s constant persuasion and other sketchy situations afterwards, that finally convinced me to do jobs closer to home. As about as many jobs as I’ve had to turn down because of the distance, they have miraculously been replaced by jobs closer to home. After a couple of years of sticking to limited territories’, repeat and word of mouth customers, I found I wasn’t cutting into my income. Not only that, but people on the street, seeing me in my Clown costume or walking with my balloons when not in costume, asks me for my card, adding more neighborhood customers to my list. I find myself being less stressed out by subway and bus delays as well as people in Manhattan tend to have less people at their parties due to lack of space in apartments and restaurants.
The only drawback now is that a lot of my parties tend to be for upper class kids whose parents aren’t as generous as far as offering food and tipping, and the kids are brattier and less appreciative than the poorer kids. Oh well you can’t have everything!