clowning Around

名称：clowning Around
内容简介：
Dear Arizona,
　 I’m always clowning around. People mostly love it when I make them laugh, but sometimes they tell me to stop being mean. I don’t get it! How come they like my jokes one minute, then turn around and get upset the next minute?
　 — Constantly Confused Class Clown

Dear CCCC,
　 First of all, you’re so lucky to be the kind of person who can make people laugh! If I wrote a list of my all-time favorite things, laughing would be up there at the top, right along with Cow (my silly cat), skateboarding, and sharing Earthquake Sundaes with my family at our favorite ice-cream place on my birthday.

There’s this kid named J.D. Hennessey who’s a class clown at my school. Normally, pretty much everything he does cracks me up. Sometimes all he has to do is look at me funny and I giggle. But there was this one day a little while ago when I was definitely not laughing.

“Hey, I love your hair like that, ’Zona!” my friend Mareya said when I got to school.

“Really? Thanks,” I said. “When I woke up this morning, I felt like doing something different.”

“Yeah, it’s good to mix it up once in a while,” Mareya said.

“Your hair does look mixed up, Arizona,” said J.D. “Totally mixed up—like it got caught in a blender!”

“Very funny,” I said.

And even though it hurt my feelings a little, I tried to act as if the comment didn’t bug me. I sat down at my desk, opened my binder, and got out my homework.

“Actually, you know what it really looks like?” said J.D. “It looks like you got caught in a giant hair-eating tornado.”

That time, I didn’t say “very funny.” I didn’t say anything at all. I was hoping he’d get that my silence meant, Enough already! Can’t you see that my feelings are hurt and I am not finding your words the slightest bit entertaining? But he just kept going.

“No, wait. I’ve got it,” he said. “Your hair looks like Dr. Frankenstein’s freaky new invention.”

I’d already switched from kind of annoyed to a little bit sad. Now I was switching from a little bit sad to a whole lot mad.

“You know what?” He was laughing about what he was going to say next. “For this year’s science fair, you won’t even need to worry about making a project. You can just enter your hair.”

“STOP!” I yelled.

“Arizona!” snapped my teacher.

“Um . . . I’m sorry.” I gulped.

The worst thing wasn’t even that I got scolded. It was that J.D. didn’t get in a single ounce of trouble. No, the very worst thing was later on at lunch. But come to think of it, that very worst thing turned out to be the very best thing.

J.D. walked right over to me as if he didn’t have a care in the world. “Wasn’t that so funny this morning?” he said.

Luckily, enough time had gone by that I was able to calm down. Instead of yelling again, I took a deep breath and said, “To be honest, I almost always think your jokes are awesome. But those things you said about my hair made me feel more like crying than laughing.”

“No way,” said J.D. “I was just joking around!”

“Well, it felt like teasing, not joking. And it definitely was not a good thing.”

“Wow.” He looked really serious. “I’m so sorry I hurt your feelings. I wonder if I always seem like that when I’m trying to be funny. Maybe I shouldn’t joke so much.”

I shook my head. “No! I’d miss it if you stopped joking around altogether. It would just be cool if you cut back on the teasing part.”

“I think I can do that,” he said.

And you know what, dear CCCC? He did! Since then, J.D. has been a lot better about not telling jokes that might make people feel bad. So basically, I think that if you can try to be funny only when you’re pretty sure you won’t hurt anyone’s feelings, you’ll get more laughs and feel less confused.

Ciao for now,

Arizona