Tears of a Clown

On the windows outside Johnny's classroom for the first few weeks of school have hung self-portraits the kids did the first day of school. God bless preschool teachers who spend their extra hours cutting out construction paper and buying all sorts of crap that even the youngest can easily assemble and feel like Monet when their art project turns out just right. The kids got to glue the appropriate color construction paper eyes and string hair to their paper plate faces to make their likenesses for the world to see. Johnny gave himself green eyes and black hair. I support this decision, as I myself have recently decided that my God-given hair color need not restrict me. Just yesterday I got my hair cut really short and requested pumpkin-orange highlights. An early midlife crisis. Much cheaper than a car. I actually like it a lot, except that a good friend of mine has a similar hairstyle (we have the same stylist) and I am beginning to feel a little bit like Bridget Fonda's friend in Single White Female.

Anyhoo, today the kids in Johnny's class replaced their self-portraits with clowns for "C" week. They got to glue the eyes, nose, and smile on to a clown. I got there a little early and was admiring all the smiling clown faces, when I noticed that there was one clown whose smile was upside down. Perhaps just a gluer's error, but upon closer examination, there were tears coming out of the clown's eyes. One crying clown among all the happy clowns. Yikes. That poor kid. I thought of how anxious I would feel if that were my kid who did the sad clown for the entire school to see and wonder to themselves, "Is there something going on at home?" So I walked over to see who the depressed 4-year old was whose name announced the dysfunction. "Johnny M." Holy shit!! MY JOHNNY?!!! Oh my God!!! I knew that the transition to a new school year would be hard, I know he doesn't have the same friends as last year, I know sometimes I yell too much at home, but I had no idea it was THIS BAD!!

When Johnny got out of class he ran up to me with a big smile and hug and he showed me the self-portrait that he was allowed to now bring home. That gave me the lead-in to ask what was up on the windows now that the self-portraits were gone. He took me over to show me his clown. "Why is he sad?" I asked. Johnny replied, "He fell down on the way to preschool this morning and scraped his knee." I gave Johnny's knee a little kiss (as he had scraped it on the way to school this morning) and asked him if it felt better. "Yep!" He assured me.