Of Clowns and Cacti

Another Upside Down Clown Necklace

Top: Crown of Hearts, Alloy

So Many Succulents Necklace

Top: Collectif X, Modcloth

So, Guthrie and Elmer.  I introduced these two a while back, and they're still out there, roaming the desert.  Only now they've picked up a protégé.  His name is Ollie, and his claim to fame is that he can stand on his head.  Why don't we make his acquaintance? 

Ollie didn't know what he'd gotten himself into.  When Guthrie and Elmer picked him up hitchhiking on the outskirts of Twin Terrors, he thought they were just another couple of oldsters.  Sure, they were crotchety as all get out and looked like they'd seen more than their share of bad road.  But it wasn't until they started talking about themselves in the third person that he started to worry.  It was as if they had split personalities.  One half was the geezers who hated clowns; the other half was the clowns.  Ollie almost asked them about it.  But it wasn't the kind of thing he could bring up after trading war stories about Route 66 or commenting on a cactus-shaped cloud.  Especially not after they'd been kind enough to share their chili, even if it was vegetarian and smelled like a compost pile.  No, weird as they were, he was in no position to make waves with these gents.  So when Guthrie asked if he'd join their act at the Sidewinder Saloon, he burped up some chili and said, "Sure."  Now he was onstage -- or on the overturned washtub that passed for a stage -- doing a headstand as the Friday night crowd jeered and catcalled.  He didn't know how women stood it, having their body parts reduced to overripe fruit, their every movement turned into something suggestive.  But he told himself to ignore the drunks and concentrate on what he was doing.  Every time he stood on his head, he did it for a few seconds longer than he had the time before.  It made him feel like he had something to work toward and that he was getting somewhere.  Plus, being ridiculed up there alongside Guthrie and Elmer bonded them more closely and quickly than any campfire or cold one ever could.  Even when, hours later as they made their way home in the stark, inky night, Guthrie and Elmer unleashed a fresh verbal assault on their alter egos.  Ollie considered telling them about his own demons.  His parents had thrown him out when he was ten because they had too many mouths to feed.  But also because they were sick of explaining why their son was such a dreamer and had a head where his feet should be.  Then Guthrie started playing his banjo, disrupting Ollie's thoughts.  When Guthrie broke the banjo over Elmer's head, Ollie knew it would be a long night.         

And that's Ollie!  You can see his likeness taking center stage in the form of a plastic noisemaker in my Another Upside Down Clown Necklace:

The two things that you need to know about this necklace are: 1) The noisemaker was the prize inside a New Year's Eve cracker, and 2) it's called "another" because there was an Upside Down Clown Necklace that came before it.

Noisy is as noisy does.  But nothing's as noisy as Guthrie's banjo.