My Uncle Ted is my inspiration for my days when I was a professional circus clown. http://www.medinah.org/clowns.htm. He was full of pranks, could tell the darnedest jokes and no one was safe. No. One.
I used to work at his garden center/flower shop when I was a wee feller of about 5 years old and up to and including into college and it constantly would amaze me at all of the stuff that he could get away with. Certainly my parents would not have approved of a fraction of his shenanigans. For instance, Uncle Ted asked me to go down to the open air fruit market and ask for Tom. Once I got there I was to ask for a left handed sky hook as we were expecting a delivery of flowers that day. So I dutifully went down the street and asked Tom and a sky hook. He gave me a playful kick in the seat of my pants and sent me back. Ted would bellow, "Hey ya little bastard, where's my hook?" and laugh uproariously. He liked to call me a little bastard all of the time. C'Est La Vie.
Now I was starting to catch on. What ever he said was pure BS so I had to be very careful. He sent one of the neighborhood kids down the street to get a left handed hammer. The kid came back and told Ted that all they had were right handed ones. Even at 7years old, I thought that this is funny.
So one day, I'm out watering the flats of flowers and I hear Uncle Ted bellowing for me. He alternated between calling me by my given name to his favorite euphemism. It would appear that he was on the throne and was out of toilet paper. I followed the rumblings and stopped at the door. He reached through the door and gave me some money and told me to get some more toilet paper right now you little bastard! He had a little difficulty getting the door open enough to hand me cash as sitting on the toilet made it nearly impossible to open the door.
I started to scurry off when some of the older guys and Ted's own brother started to say Whoa and slow down. What's your hurry little man? They all had that sneaky smile that said something was up. They wised me up right away and I took a leisurely stroll down the block to the little grocery store for the much needed paper.
I stopped along the way to talk to some of the kids of the store owners and ate an apple, visited with the neighbors dogs, had a water hose fight and so on. By the time I got back the guys were howling with laughter and you could almost see the steam coming from the bathroom as Ted was soooo angry. During my absence, they decided that it would be a good, no an ultra ubber stupendous idea to tear the sticks off of the bottle rockets, light them and send them on their way to the captive audience on the other side of the stink door. What was he going to do, run after them? I think not. He was screaming and carrying on stomping his feet and vowing to kill everyone and their prodigies. They were worried that he might have set his britches ablaze so in another stellar inspirational moment, they got a water hose and flooded the shrine with about an inch of ice cold water. His belongings weren't on fire but I'll bet they they just might have been a tad moist.
I announced that I was back and told him that I couldn't decide what color paper to buy so I described all of the colors and their textures that I had and asked which he would like first. He was flailing away madly with one arm through the little bit of door opening that his legs would allow and I was just barely and wisely out of reach! He finally yelled some words that this then 7 year old never heard before and I came closer and gave him the bag with about 25 rolls of individually wrapped paper. He withdrew the bag so forcefully and quickly that the bag got stuck on the door handle and broke open and all of the rolls were now rolling away from him. The other guys were besides themselves with laughter and found it impossible to stand up, I'm trying to gather up at least one roll to hand to him and not be drug into his temper tantrum lair and escape with my very young and about to end life
He finally got a roll and was cursing up a blue streak and after making his escape from the poop prison and yelled where are you ya little bastard? but I was long gone by then. We went a little too far that day I guess but the other guys still remember it quite fondly (I hope) and Uncle Ted did eventually calmed down and forgive me. He could take a joke as well as anyone if not more so but that time set the benchmark for me and taught me a valuable lesson. Make them laugh but don't give them a stroke!
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