Take a captive audience of students, a straight man or woman in the form of a teacher and, say, integral calculus or the Platt amendment, and you have most kids' definition of Hades. But for a class clown, it's the equivalent of open mike night at the local comedy club.
We all owe a debt to class clowns, whose inspired comments and well-timed belches have provided a bit of blessed comic relief in the middle of interminable lectures on igneous rock and pasteurization. For those who wish to carry on this proud tradition of creative disruption, we advise you to avoid Jay Leno's newly released "How to Be the Funniest Kid in the Whole Wide World," (Byron Preiss Visual Publications, $12.95). It's about as funny as a screen door in a submarine.
Instead, we offer these lessons from the experts. Before we get started, you in the back -- we know your real name is not Oliver Cloezoff.
LESSON ONE: Know your audience.
Greensburg psychologist Dr. John Carosso, co-owner of Community Psychiatric Centers, classifies class clowns into three types. The first is the classic cut-up, immortalized by George Carlin in his autobiographical 1972 album, "Class Clown."
"These are typically kids who are very bright, bored, don't quite fit into the box of society, and they act up just to pass the time and make life more interesting for themselves," Carosso says. "Typically, they're very well liked. If you hear stories about (people such as) Jay Leno, and they go back to their high school, they really like them."
A school psychologist, Carosso counsels the other two types, who are often referred to him by frustrated parents or school officials. Kids with learning disabilities who can't get up to speed often disrupt class to avoid the work, he says. The most undesirable type of class clown is the hostile kid whose attempts at comedy are intended to hurt.
His examples of the latter type: "Putting a tack on somebody's chair, or something that would soil the pants. Writing something on the chalk board that's mean-spirited."
If you're one of these, you're going to get bad reviews right off, he says. And you won't get away with as much as the "good" non-hostile class clown.
"They have a certain charisma," Carosso says. "They understand timing. They get away with things other kids couldn't get away with, while mean-spirited kids do one small thing and they'll get suspended."
Successful class clowns also know how to read their audience. Frank Caliendo, an impressionist, comic and featured player on "Mad TV" on Fox, began cracking wise in the sixth grade. He built an audience with imitations of the "mean basketball coach," but also knew when to put a sock in it.
"Teachers would pretty much let me say what I wanted," he says. "So as soon as they gave you a look, you knew when to stop. It's something that I have that I could tell, 'Hey, this is going well; keep going with it' or 'The teacher is not in the mood for this.'
"I never got a detention or anything like that."
LESSON TWO: You're only as good as your last success.
In the preface to "How to Be the Funniest Kid in the Whole World," Leno writes of his first comedy bit in fourth grade, when he wrapped his buddy Joel in Ace bandages from head to foot to make him look like a mummy. "We put a sign on him that said '10,000 B.C.' and wheeled him into class," Leno writes.
When someone asked what the numbers meant, Leno replied, "That was the license plate of the truck that hit him."
"We got a big laugh, followed by a long silence. We didn't have anything else to say."
That also happened to Kathy Egan 52, of Millvale. She made her bid for the class clown hall of fame in the fifth grade at Sacred Heart Elementary School in East Liberty. Her teacher, Sister Mary Lawrence, instituted a chewing gum policy in which students were fined a nickel if they were caught chomping on the Juicy Fruit.
"I was the class weirdo," Egan says. "When I was in fifth grade, I thought that maybe if I clowned around a bit, the kids would like me better. ... I was chewing gum in class. She said, 'Five cents, miss.' I said. 'Sister, you'll have to put it on my charge account. I'm broke.'"
Her classmates roared. If she had been on "The Tonight Show," Egan probably would have been invited to come over and sit down with Leno. Alas, she never approached the hilarity of that early success.
"I was still considered the class weirdo, just a class weirdo with a big mouth," Egan says. "This was in 1963. You didn't mouth off to nuns. My mother raised hell with me."
LESSON THREE: Funny is smart turned inside out.
Todd Ashbaugh, 34, of Kittanning, teaches social studies at Dorseyville Middle School. His fellow teachers all have different attitudes toward class clowns and their smart-alecky comments and funny noises.
"There are people who let class clowns monopolize the classroom or those who won't let class clowns speak at all," Ashbaugh says. "I like to think I'm somewhere in the middle. "
Although Ashbaugh sets boundaries early in the school year so the kids don't get too comfortable talking out of turn, he sees opportunity where other teachers might see a kid with a pencil hanging from each nostril.
"My strategy is to use the energy of the clown to my advantage," he says. "I laugh when something is funny. It kind of shows the kids you're human. When the kids see that side of you, they feel they can connect with you a little more easily. That's half the battle."
Class clowns recall stunts
Shane Portman, Chicago:
Portman, a graduate of Point Park University, recalls his sophomore year in high school, when his French teacher would award bonus points to students who brought in a news item that dealt with world affairs.
"I told her the last thing that I saw was that they had knocked down the Great Wall of China and found a smaller wall inside where small people had lived," Portman says. "You could see it was inches away for being checked off as a bonus point, but people were laughing."
Portman now is a member of the Animal Club, a sketch comedy troupe.
David Truby, Shelocta, Indiana County:
A former journalism professor at Indiana University, Truby recalls his own school days in the '40s when he talked two classmates into ditching class by climbing out a bathroom window. Once they climbed down, Truby closed and locked the window and went back to class.
"They would get me back," he says. "You had to put your name on your lunch. They grabbed my lunch bag, put dead worms and flies in it, and put it in one of the girls' desks."
Nancy Kacin, Murrysville:
Kacin recalls the day her son, Daniel Leskell, became a legend at Franklin Regional Middle School.
It's not something she remembers fondly.
On June 5, 2001, she came home and found the following message with her answering service:
"Your son has streaked with another boy and left the building and we've called the police. "
Her son, then 13, had bared all with a buddy on a 100-yard dash across the auditorium stage during an awards ceremony.
"When it first happened, I was like, 'Oh my God, I can't believe he did it,'" she says. "It was very upsetting. (But) I (eventually) got to see what he did was pretty brave and didn't hurt anybody, and so I guess I tended to understand that it was just him and his personality."
Leskell, who just turned 18, made it through high school graduation, but not before his mother says he instigated the biggest food fight in school history.
He will study music at the Berkelee School of Music in Boston, Mass.
Class acts
Kids! Want to get in trouble⢠Write down one of these names on the attendance sheet the day you have a substitute teacher and she calls roll:
Anita Fix Seymour ButzJerry AtricDoris LockedElla VaderWillie MakeitHolden Migroin
When the subject is ...
Geography
You bring up: Lake Titicaca
Astronomy:
You bring up: The planet Uranus, black holes
Arts and Culture:
You bring up: The Nutcracker, Beethoven's last movement
Class clown classic songs
Never underestimate the power of song parodies. The follow is a classic, sung to the tune of "My Country 'Tis of Thee":
My country sick of me, sent me to GermanyTo see the KingHis name was Daffy DuckHe drove a garbage truckThrough every mountainside,to the city dump.
