"The Clown Hurt Himself!"

Something I've deeply feared happened on Friday. I got hurt in the middle of a show.

WARNING WARNING WARNING this is very gross what did to myself. Enjoy.

If I have room, I do a slapstick routine, where I'm trying to tell a story while trying to sit down on a preschool chair. Like all my routines, I get mad at the chair, as if the chair was trying to hurt me.

Just to give you a reference of how it goes, I start to talk, sit down on the edge and fall off. I do this right, then left. Then examine the chair. Sit down cross my legs fall over. sit down on the other side fall over. getting faster, slide off to the left, then slide off to the right. Then I get an idea put my foot down on the chair slam my head into the chair holding my nose. Get a better idea, sit down and balance the chair on my nose...applause the chair falls straight down conking me on top of the head and I stumble off.

I add other things in there depending on the audience and their attention span.

This time...slid left fell on my tuchas. Got angry...here's the key, when I do most of these routines, I'm clear of the chair, the drama of the falling is usually the recoil or a big bounce on the butt. When I slid right....got the corner of the chair...caught it right in...the place you go poo....

I end the routine, the blood has left my head, I think I'm going to faint. I'm completely sure I ripped that area and am bleeding into my pants. I think I just started flop sweating like mad in fear.

What do I do. I was thinking, I should really drive to the hospital, this is bad. This is a lot of pain.

I needed to end the show but I would have been shorting them...so I pulled out some balloons to make for the kids, because I can make them laugh on auto pilot with balloons. But blowing them up might really cause problems back there you know with the pressure and all....

I was feeling slightly better, thought I could make it through, go home clean up and go to the hospital.

so, I pulled out heart shaped balloons which are hard to blow up but not as hard as an animal balloon. Made 40 or so of those.
Gritted my teeth and smiled and took compliments.

Waiting to get my check, I was playing with the kids and got caught by a 4 year old as he slugged me in the crotch. This is a very very common thing for 4 year old boys to do plus they are generally about that height. As a children's performer I'm hyper aware of everything going on around me, so I can catch their little fist before they can swing.

Except, I was way off my game wondering if the blood patch on the back of my pants was bothering anyone. So I took one in the front to equal things out in the back...

Got out of there, everyone loved me. Feeling a lot better when I got in the car, feeling better when I got home.

Checked nothing.

Likely just hit a bunch of nerves.

So other than to gross you out, why did I write about this? What do you do in a show if you can't go on? There's no such thing, if you can walk, you can finish, you can find a way.

I should have taken up guitar when I was a kid...a lot less pain.