A Funny Story

Jiggles Jiggler didn’t think his name was at all funny.  Nor did he consider his multi-coloured frizz of hair particularly jocular.  His big red tomato nose was, if anything, unremarkable.  And he would have been surprised if anyone had even noticed his rainbow suit with the giant shoes.

You see, Jiggles Jiggler lived in clown city.

Every morning, he climbed aboard his Model-T special with three small wheels and one large one, gave a squeeze of the  oversized rubber bulb – honk, honk honey, I’m leaving for work now – and drove the hundred yards or so to the train station with the usual bangs and orange smoke.

The Purple Puff-Puff was standing in the station and he climbed aboard the pink and white striped carriage with a hundred other clowns and settled back in the seat for the forty minute journey to the office downtown.

Every day he did it and every day it was the same: carriage full of clowns, all with big red noses and over-sized shoes.  Now and then, another clown would enter the carriage, sit down – usually on a honking horn – and they’d all gaze mindlessly out of the window until they arrived at their respective offices.

It was always like that – had always been like that – would always be like that - if it hadn’t been for Bert Smith.

On that fateful day, Jiggles Jiggler had only traveled two or three stations when someone entered the carriage.

It was the funniest thing they had ever seen.  He was dressed in a grey suit – absolutely no colours in it at all and it looked as though someone had actually made it ‘to fit’.  You couldn’t help but smile.  And his hair was black!  Black!  And … you’d hardly believe it – he had a normal nose.  That was a killer.  A normal nose.

The man sat down and then Jiggles Jiggler saw something that nearly sent him into hysterics.  The man’s shoes!  He had never, ever, seen anything like them before.  Ever.  They were tiny, so tiny, in fact, that they were only slightly larger than his feet!

Jiggles Jiggler just couldn’t stop himself – he had to laugh – big guffaws.   Tears ran down his face, carving little channels through the grease paint and dripping multi-coloured rainbow kaplonks on his giant bright yellow bow tie.  He felt a little ashamed of himself but he just couldn’t help it, he just had to laugh.  Everything about this man was so darn funny.   Hilarious.  Uproarious.

Pretty soon the others were laughing too.  The mundane world of clowns had suddenly been transformed by this funny little man in a grey suit and small shoes. 

He introduced himself as ‘Bert Smith’ and the whole carriage broke up in helpless abandon to good, old-fashioned belly-laughs and curious clowns with painted smiles from the surrounding carriages looked in to see what the fuss was about.  Pretty soon it seemed as though the whole clown express was laughing fit to bust.

It turned out that his real name was Cocoa Snuggles and he’d done it for a laugh - to give everyone else a laugh in fact.  And it had.  In a world full of red noses and big shoes, frizzy coloured hair and rainbow suits, Bert Smith had brought a touch of hilarity into the drab world of clowns.