Heffernan Family Events – Vol. 4

The Heffernan Family is defined by its history together and apart. Well-known to us, but maybe not to everyone are the family members and all those other people, places, and events that serve to make up our own unique family identity. This post if an effort to detail the people and events that make us the Royal Heffernans.

Ian the Clown

Some little kids can’t get enough peanut butter. They’ll sit behind a chair with a spoon and eat it out of the jar until they get sick. Some little kids can’t help but pick their noses- and then eat it. Ian was the little kid who couldn’t stop licking his lips.

You may think I’m talk about chapped lips being lipped to keep from drying and cracking, but that’s not true. Ian would protrude his tongue ala Gene Simmons and lick a ring around his mouth to the limit of his tongue. Think of Scooby-Doo licking the frosting off his face and you’ve got Ian right there. But even Scooby had the sense only to lick his face when frosting was on it; Ian licked his face constantly. And for his efforts he received a chapped, red ring around his mouth that was lovingly dubbed his “clown face.”

The funny thing about the clown face is not only that Ian did it (because Ian has been and always will be the paragon of self-control and moderation), but that he enjoyed doing it. We have photographic proof of Ian smiling with the “clown face” and also of Ian smiling while create the clown face.

I was young, I don’t remember the “clown face” and well as I remember Ted’s “The Face” (who could forget the terror that would wash over them when “The Face” was made), but I have seen the pictures of it. The great Heffernan forebears – Mom and Dad – are the first known to have referred to Ian’s chapped face as a “clown face.” This is most likely due to the fact that Ian loved Bozo the Clown and watched WGN constantly (his belief that it is easy to throw the ball in the buckets for the “Grand, Prize, Game!” is false: it's actually very hard, go try! And you know inflation is bad when they drop $200 in the bucket nowadays).

I guess Ian did it right; if you have to look like an idiot, at least he looked like an idiot that everyone loved. Bozo was a clown, and while I’m deathly afraid of all clowns and would rather eat my own hand than go to a clown show, Ian’s “clown face,” with his chapped lips, dumb smile, and constant snake-like licking, made me learn to tolerate Bozo quite well. While I still fear clowns, because Ian was incapable of stopping his powerful habit of licking himself I can now tolerate Bozo.