To: Clowns
From: TSA
Re: TSA Guidelines for National Clown Week
As you prepare to celebrate International Clown Week, the first week in August, we want to ensure you understand our travel regulations.
1. Show proper ID. We’re looking for a driver’s license or a passport, not your World Clown Association membership card or your Clown College diploma or your press pass from Clowning Around magazine.
2. Provide your real name. Slappy, Mr. Chuckles, Giggle Master, Miss Jiggles-a-Lot, and Happy Pappy are not legal names we recognize. We don’t care if in middle school you picked a secret clown name your parents still refuse to call you.
3. Remove your shoes. The list of prohibited shoes includes pleather clown boots, jumbo clown shoes, yellow and red clown shoes (we’re talking to you, Ronald M.), and red and white polka dot tug boats. Claiming size 22 Converse shoes are acceptable because “they’re comfortable” and “just like LeBron James wears” must be removed.
4. Empty your pockets. Whoopee cushions, whipped cream pies, red foam noses, bulb horns, rubber chickens, squirt cameras, squirting flowers, guns expelling a red flag with the word “bang,” giant underwear, or adult-sized pacifiers are not allowed. No one thinks these props are funny, especially not your parents who wonder what they did wrong to make you more interested in pursuing a career as a clown than settling for a government job.
5. Answer all security questions in your actual voice. Silly voices, baby talk, mimed responses and horn honking are not allowed. Helium-induced high voices are no more tolerated than they were when you shouted “Look at me now” while walking across the stage at high school graduation.
6. No balloons. This includes balloon dogs, balloon swords, balloon hats, balloon pigs, balloon elephants, and especially no balloons with a single string or sad clown attached.
7. Face paint allowed, but no frowns. You’re a clown. You’re supposed to make people happy instead of reminding them of the sad clown in an independent French film.
8. No cackling. Snickers, belly laughs, guffaws, giggles, hee-haws, haw-haws and chortles are allowed. Psychotic cackling is not. Working for the TSA is depressing enough without hearing laughter like the clown from the movie It.
9. No fruit. More specifically, no bananas. Even more specifically, no banana peels. No one enjoys being kicked out of clown college, then subsequently sued for placing a fresh banana peel outside of their instructor’s door.
10. No ruffled collars. You’re a clown, not Queen Elizabeth, so dress accordingly. Why not settle for wearing a TSA uniform as your soul slowly dies each time a clown passes through your checkpoint?