This isn’t just a Bozo the Clown Classic Punching Bag. This is training. Every time someone punches Bozo in the face, he flies back up, smiling. He takes a hit like a Weeble Wobble. He won’t fall down, no matter what you do to him, no matter how hard you hit.
Bozo is shaped like a pear, with a wide, tense smile. Even when he pops back up, the smile is still the same. Bozo pretends it doesn’t hurt. Bozo takes it day after day, hour after hour, enduring the blows, facing the pain.
The puncher tries to make Bozo cry, but Bozo does not cry, Bozo smiles. This is a toy, but this is a lesson. This is adulthood. This is not complaining. This is not telling anyone to stop, to knock it off, to fuck off.
This is a punching bag with a face, this is a thing full of air. But it is full of other things. When someone here in the house isn’t having fun anymore, when the boredom sets in, they pull its stopper and all of the air comes out, until this punching bag with the smile on its face withers. As it deflates no one sees the sadness, no one but me hears him say, I did what you wanted. I did what you asked and still it’s not good enough.
They tell me later that, as a child, I cried at the mere sight of the Bozo the Clown Classic Punching Bag. Every time I saw it, I couldn’t stop crying, even though no one was punching, even though no one else was crying, just you, and I said, that’s not true, someone else cried too. Someone else had been crying out the whole time.
