A Beautiful Memory: Clowns

It looks like, even though I’m still depressed, I’m getting a little bit of my writing mojo back. I have at least been commenting more on other people’s posts and feel like I want to write again. I was inspired to write this post by a question over at Pointless Overthinking. The question was about your most beautiful memory from last year. In 2018, my most beautiful memory was of saying goodbye at my old day activities. I already posted about that when it actually happened though. For this reason, I’m choosing another memory to share.

On November 23, 2017, my old day activities organized a “day out” for all clients. The reason it was called that was because they get money to take each client on an outing each year. This hadn’t happened in years though and, with many clients being profoundly and multiply disabled, it would’ve been hard. Instead of going out with those who could do this, the staff chose to have a “day in”. They organized for two clowns to visit the center.

I attended the group for profoundly and multiply disabled people at the time. I am not profoundly disabled, but I most enjoyed the sensory activities at that group. The clowns visited us and started interacting with the clients. None of the other clients can talk, but they thoroughly enjoyed it. So did I.

In addition to the clowns visiting, the staff had organized for a snack and fries delivery truck to come by. The clients at my group couldn’t make it clear what they wanted from the truck, so at first I too was just given a particular snack. When I discovered you were actually allowed to order your own snacks and fries, and as much as you wanted, I joined the people at the more able industrial group to fetch myself snacks. It was a ton of fun.

I was reminded of this day a few weeks ago, when a staff’s ddaughter visited us practising as a clown. She was in the process of auditioning to become a hospital clown and wanted some practice. She was really good. Unfortunately, she didn’t pass the auditions though.