When you enter a clowns’ dressing room for the first time, nothing’s too out of the ordinary. 

It isn’t too different from any other dressing room, really. It’s a good size, is well lit, has a private area for changing in, comes with swivel chairs with mirrors affixed to the wall and contains an absolute metric ton of balloons.

In one chair, a man is taking thick brushes loaded with white and black pastes and dragging them across his face, focusing on his eyes first with some wide strokes above the eyebrow, then beneath. Soon, he purses his lips and outlines his mouth with the same colors. At this point, he’s no longer a citizen of the city – he’s a sad hobo – the kind of clown this area is known for.

Another chair has a woman fully decked-out in a pastel pink, polka-dotted dress, with electric green hair that curls to the side and an oversized bow on top. Her mouth is thickly outlined in red, like she messed up her lipstick. On her high cheek bones, she’s got pink blush with glitter. On the tip of her nose, the same glittery pink is there – this time in the shape of a heart.

It’s the look that Cupcake’s gone with for years.

Done with her getup, she’s making balloon animals. Name one, it’s yours. Doesn’t really matter how exotic you get – she can do it. What else would you expect? She’s an expert at it.  

I got out of there with an interview, a good-sized red dot on the tip of my good-sized nose and a dark green balloon snake. Before you scoff, it was a trio of balloons intertwined – a green one for its body, a white one for the eyes and an uninflated red one for the tongue. It looked like something straight out a cartoon with its sharpie’d-on eyes.

But when you enter a clowns’ dressing room for the second time, you exit a changed person. At least I did. I went in as Chad, but I exited with a new moniker.

That night, you called me Scribbles.

The fear of clowns is something only adults have, I think. In my experience, kids, at least kids in the “Circus Capital of the World,” Peru, Ind., friggin love clowns.

That small city in the North Central part of the state goes by that title for good reason. First off, it’s home to one of, as far as I know, the few amateur youth circuses in the country. Secondly, it’s home to the International Circus Hall of Fame, which hosts a professional circus alongside the local kids across a timespan in July aptly named Circus Week.

Working at the local paper in that small town of just over 10,000 people, I made connections with all sorts of folks – including the circus. But since we always wrote about the kiddos and their juggling of flaming objects and 40-foot high-wire acts and trapeze arts – it kind of felt like we ignored the clowns.

When you’re handed a tight, banana-yellow button-up shirt with a starchy collar, blue patchwork nylon pants spattered with squares of red, green and yellow that come down to your calves and need to be cinched up considerably before something dire happens, and a spiky, flared-out cerulean wig that looked like something an ‘80s hair band would have absolutely crushed it in, a few thoughts first run through your mind.

“Changing room’s in the back,” a cherry-red curly-haired clown with a small milk-dud-at-first-glance heart on the tip of her nose, said, following up her directions with a beaming, smeary lipsticked smile. Her name was Pistol.

“You passed by it before on your way in.”

They are largely the same thoughts that first cross your mind when she was applying your makeup.

Changing out of professional clothes – a boring, black polo and some khakis – into this kind of outfit gives you a surprising amount of time to reflect on how much you don’t know a single thing about the circus. I never went to circuses as a kid – there weren’t many opportunities in my area and when there were, I didn’t go. These clowns? They did. The performers? They did. The audience? Of course they did. Loads of them probably performed in this very place.

Big shoes to fill? You could say that, yeah. They didn’t give me shoes though. Used my work shoes. I was hoping for the the classics – red, enormous snowshoes – difficult to walk in, maybe by design, maybe because shoes aren’t meant to be that big without enough footmeat to support them. Instead, got a pair of brown loafers to perform in. Really tied the look together.

Plenty of “what am I even doing right nows” and “you’ve really done it this times” were followed by “well there’s no backing outs” while struggling to put those pants on. There’s only so many ways pants work and none of them were.

When you enter a clowns’ dressing room for a third time, things get a little crazy.

First, you’re dressed for the part. There really is no going back at this point. And second, you’re in their world now and you still don’t know the first thing about any of this. It’s not just the lack of experience, it’s the complete goose-egg’s worth of rehearsal you have under your literal work belt you’ve been wearing all day already. They didn’t have any extras on hand with the rest of these clown hand-me-downs.

“All you have to do is offer candy to the kids and say hi to the audience,” Ms. LaRue had said a few moments earlier when she was sitting next to Pistol during make-up, helping sculpt what would become Scribbles. The rest of the character, she and the other clowns insisted, was up to me.

Time for a workout. Now, bring your right arm up bent at a 90-degree angle and almost whack yourself in the face with it, kind of like you were going to block the sun out of your eyes. Next, bring your left leg up, bending your knee as high as you can and then somehow step that leg forward. Got it? Good. Do that off and on for three hours.

That’s my gait for this evening. That’s the character I’ve chosen to play. That’s Scribbles’ shtick.

A three-ring circus is quite the spectacle. The oblong-shaped stadium hosted dim red seats around its perimeter, with three good-sized rings in the middle, each one containing a show. On one side you might have local kids, like members of the school band or even the high school quarterback, juggling flaming whatevers in one side of the arena while other local kiddos as young as 7 are swinging on thick white ropes, kind of looking like bed linens, out into the audience, juuuust about in range that they could reach out and give you a high five. The final side of the stage, all while everything else is going on, might have the tumblers rolling around or the almost-creepy-in-their-flexibility contortionists walking all over the place like they’re straight out of a horror movie.

All the while, the clowns watch from the dressing room. A door from it leads to a very, very small balcony that hangs in one corner of the arena, room for a clown or three. From there, you’ve got a spectacular view on the ring nearest the primary entrance, a decent-enough look at the main ring next to it but you’d really have to crane your neck to get a good line-of-sight on the far side.

But none of that is happening yet.

Folks are still filing into the arena. But the clowns are all dressed. We’re ready to go. I’m ready to go? I might be. A local reporter in a small town, and with a unique enough appearance that, I suppose, I’m a known commodity. You might not know my name, but you’ve probably seen me around and know what I do. But as it turns out, there’s a reason why just a pair of glasses worked so well in masking Superman’s true identity. Because when you put on the wig and nose, you’re a new person. No one knows you. Not Chad, now you’re Scribbles.

Almost showtime. Almost clowntime. It’s our duty, I’m told, to get the audience warmed up before the show, keep them interested and smiling during the intermissions and, if they weren’t already, also at the end of the night. It’s a three-hour show.

When you exit a clown’s dressing room for the, (Exit? Oh what are we at now, sixth time I think?) you step into a commons area where most of the performers gather before the show. These are the real stars. This is who the audience paid to see. And despite wearing sequins and leotards and makeup and all that, they’re still just kids. Chattering amongst themselves about the things kids worry about. Taking selfies. Wondering about test scores and if that boy or girl likes them back and so on and so forth.

You leave the commons the same way you got there, up a shiny, brown staircase with white walls. What you didn’t notice on your way up is that across the top of the overhang is a red glowing lightbulb. And just below that is a phrase written in big red block letters that performers slap as they go underneath it and into the three-rings.

A fellow clown told me that people don’t encourage good performances in the circus with the old “break a leg” saying.

No, they say “bump a nose.”

And people were bumping. I bumped it too. Right on the O.

At the bottom of the stairs to the right there’s a thin, black curtain that blocks the entrance to backstage, letting out underneath some seat supports. And once you’re past that maze of steel bars, you’re there. You’ve made it. The big time. The big top.

And all eyes are on you. You’re part of the show after all.

I had absolutely no rehearsal for this situation. I’d only an inkling of what I was supposed to do with all this candy that sagged my blue nylon pants down. Lucky that belt worked.

Inhaling, I took a deep breath through my mouth, held it for a moment and slowly exhaled. Then I pulled out the walk, horrendously overstepping each foot so to cause a scene, screaming through my gestures: “Look at me! I’m a clown!”

You know how you can always see your nose, you just learn to look past it? That takes additional effort when what is essentially a big red ball with a part cut out of it is glued to its tip.

Early in my walk around the arena, I took stock of the situation. The resident sad clown is over talking with some people, hamming it up. Cupcake’s whipping up a nice balloon. Ms. LaRue is talking with some kids and Pistol is playing catch with some circusgoers. Where’d she get a ball from? Other clowns are doing other clown things and I’m just walking around like a big goof.

The candy in my pockets jingled like change and rubbed up against my legs like I was trying to squeeze past a garden hedge with each oversized step, but it was a reminder that I did have at least one play in my book.                

Quite literally in the spotlight and with a wide-open mouth offering what I hoped was a goofy and inviting smile, I spied a row of kids and Scribbles’d my way over to them. You ever laugh with your tongue out and notice the sound you make? Try it now if you’d like. That sound? That’s how I tried to speak all the time. Sounded clowny enough – trick is talk with your tongue basically hanging out of your gob, with it not doing that.

Full disclosure: I’ve never had pocketfuls of candy with the sole intention of giving them to kids I don’t know. And let me tell you, that’s a weird feeling.

But it wasn’t Chad offering candy out of his pockets to kids he didn’t know. It was Scribbles. And that was his job. Literally just scooping handfuls of candy out of my monstrous pockets with both hands and dropping it into the waiting cupped hands of local youngsters below. I did that a lot. It was all I could really do.

On my inaugural lap as a clown, I happened upon an older man in a wheelchair, who said I was a new face to him. For all I knew, I was the first new clown this circus had seen in years.

His short, white hair was difficult to see underneath his veterans hat. Not to mention he’s sort of hunched in a wheelchair. The rest of his features were hard to make out with the reduced lighting and the whole, you know, blue wig in my eyes and honkin’ big nose, but he bade me closer. He couldn’t speak very loudly and the arena was starting to get fuller, but he was still inquisitive. A circusgoer for years and years and years, he wanted to know who I was. How long had I been clowning? Reporter mode kind of kicked in.

I was doing this for a story. I was the only person performing that night getting paid to do so. I had to know what it was like and I was going to write about it. He said he’d not keep me any longer, wished me luck and that he was looking forward to my article. He smiled at me and I couldn’t help but return it. Whether I wanted to or not. It was painted on my face.

I revealed my true identity that night to only a handful of people – the old man, a close former coworker who kind of recognized me at first, did a double take and was far too tickled that I was out and clowning, and a local councilwoman. The latter was the only person who was afraid of me.

“Oh, hi there,” I said innocuously enough as I stumbled across her in the audience, mistakenly calling her by her name without realizing what sort of consequences that might have.

I had interrupted a conversation she was having.

“Uh what,” she stopped and her eyes widened. Her speech grew quicker with each word she spoke “How do you know my name? Who are you?”

The disguise was definitely working. And this woman had seen a ghost. Even worse for her, she had seen a clown. Who comes to a circus when they’re afraid of clowns, anyway?

Quickly trying to placate the situation, I reached up and removed my nose and revealed my identity, saying my full name as clearly as possible, enunciating each syllable. I hoped I’d done that outside of enough prying eyes.  

There wasn’t much else I could do to remedy the situation beyond that – she squinted and claimed she recognized the face and the voice, but just might have been trying to get rid of me.  

I quickly stuffed the nose back onto my face, not even thinking about how the glue holds and if there was any fixing a broken nose in the middle of a circus.

“Oh good, the next council meeting I cover should be a fun one,” I thought to myself, trying to force the big grin back out and laugh at the situation as I made my way to another group of candy-needing kiddos.  

Fortunately, not soon after my mistake, my fellow clownship called for my attention and indicated that our work was done here. It was time for the show to start.

When you enter the clowns’ dressing room for the xth time, it becomes a sort of safe haven.

You’re among friends. Your people. You don’t have all the eyes on you. No video cameras. No cell phones. Just balloons and bottles of water.

I told them how it went down there in my first foray, the good and the bad. What I was doing was working: the kids couldn’t get enough of the funny clown with the goofy walk. But I had also terrified a person.

A shrug and “it happens,” was the response I met with.

We took turns watching the acts from the small, darkened balcony. Most of these clowns were parents of performers and they were obviously eager to see how they did.

During the intermissions, the clowns perform shows.

“Hey, do you wanna come down there with us?”

I declined, saying I’d rather watch – partly true, partly due to fear. A quick lap around the arena doing my Scribbles walk dishing out candy and I was back on the balcony. It was a good call to pass on the intermission shows.

One in particular involved a hokey set-up where one clown found themselves strapped to a flat, circle-shaped wall while balloons were set up around them. An audience member was chosen from random, I’m not sure if they were planted or not (probably not) to throw knives at the now blindfolded and bound, balloon-surrounded clown.

I knew I would have been strapped on that wheel. That’s the easy part of the show.

But instead of having the audience member actually heave knives at them, the gag, of course, was that the other clowns would creep up and pop the balloons while the ringmaster narrated the scene for everyone to thunderous applause at the end and raucous laughter during. These clowns knew their stuff.

Oh! Another great example of how ingrained this circus is in the community: the ringmaster at this time, I think he’s retired by now, was the county prosecutor – the man I worked with closely on crime-related stories on a near daily basis. He led the show dressed in a glittery, sequined outfit that looked straight out of any circus-related movie. A far cry from the suits and ties of the working day.

It was during another post-candy-lap balcony visit, solo since every other clown was participating in the second intermission show, that the craziness of what I’d gotten myself into started to sink in. For some people, this might be their only visit to the circus. It’s a tourist attraction, after all. For some people, I’m going to be on their home movies. I might show up in a photo as just another nameless clown at “this really neat little circus we went to one summer.”

That was a weird thought. Suddenly this wasn’t just me on the clock for a story. It was sort of a means of traveling beyond wherever my journeys might actually take me. Who knows where Scribbles the Clown would one day end up as a result? Am I in a scrapbook somewhere?

At the end of the show, which ends with a death-defying trapeze act that you have trouble believing is done by local children – these kids are like 40-feet high or whatever with a net below them – every performer takes a victory lap around the arena, waving and thanking the audience for their attention and support. What was in my first two such outings on the stage a clown-centric affair, I was instead surrounded by at least 100 other circus performers. I wasn’t sure whether to keep up the gag walk or not, but decided to stick with it since that’s all I had, waving on every other step so as not to lose my balance or knock anyone over.  

Once the last few audience members had left and most of the performers had skedaddled as well, I turned to head back through the thin-black curtain for the fourth and final time. To dress down. Take off the hair, nose and paint and cease being Scribbles and resume being Chad.

When you enter the clowns’ dressing room for –

I felt a quick tap on my right shoulder before I could pass through the curtain. Turning around, I realized it had been one of the two circus producers. The head honchos. The people who had to OK my involvement in this mess. Even the ringmaster answers to them.

“Hey,” she said. “Someone wants to talk with you.”

No emotion. No inflection. No nothing. Serious and straight to the point.

You know how a running gag in the circus is a tiny car absolutely packed to the brim with clowns and it gets more and more absurd as they keep piling out? That wasn’t in the show, but that was my heart in this moment, only it was a wreck with dozens of injuries.

I’d obviously messed up somewhere. I shook myself to alertness and marched out to my fate.

Only to meet a mother holding a young girl, who couldn’t have been more than 5? Maybe 6? She was exhausted, resting on her mother hip. It was a three-hour show. Before I could think about what terrible thing I had obviously done –

“Hey there,” the mother said, interrupting my thoughts. She flicked her head in a nod to her daughter. “She just wanted to say something to you.”

The young girl, her eyes just barely open, said in what was practically a whisper, the one clear memory that has no fog for me in this story.

“You were my favorite tonight, Scribbles.”

The purest sensation of absolute delight is a difficult thing to describe, but I’ll try. Picture being – um. No, never mind. There is no analogy better than what had literally just occurred.

Imagine being a clown for the first time ever, thinking you had really messed something up and then being told by a young girl that you were her favorite.

There are no comparisons to be made.

I thanked the pair for attending the circus, the girl for appreciating my clown performance and wished them well. I made my way back through the curtain, up the bump-a-nose staircase and entered a clowns’ dressing room for the final time, where I shared that last bit with my fellow clowns. It was after the congratulations that I sat down to unmask when something struck me.

I took my nose off and remembered that I hadn’t revealed my name to anyone. I wasn’t announced and no one had asked me who I was, either in person or as a clown. There were only three people in that crowd who I thought knew me. But they only knew my real name. The name, Scribbles, as far as I knew, wasn’t a known thing.

And yet somehow, it was known. And Scribbles had made an impact on at least one person. That was enough. I got what I wanted out of this experience: a story to tell.

Later that night, I rode an elephant for the first time. Her name was Cindy. It felt like straddling a waterbed. You gotta really stretch your legs to get up on those things.