Bret Calvert

A few years ago, while talking to Jeff Foxworthy, I said the following sentence for some reason…

“One of my earliest memories is my Mom in a clown suit throwing up into a gallon of milk.”

He replied, “You know, Bret…if that’s the first line in a novel…I would totally read the rest of that book!”

I was a little bit shy of my fifth birthday and my brother, Todd, and I were sitting at our kitchen table in Hunt. For some reason, our kitchen table was a picnic table complete with benches and splinters. I never got a clear indication of why that was. Maybe some our furniture was stolen from a fairground…I’m not sure.

We were eating microwave breakfast corn dogs. You know, sausage wrapped in a pancake on a stick with a little syrup packet for dipping. If you haven’t personally experienced the joy of microwave breakfast corn dogs, I suggest a trip to your local supermarket to see if Jimmy Dean is still in the MBCD business. They should still be a thing unless some dumb kid choked on the stick and the product was banned. (I’m still pissed off at whatever dumb kid ruined Yard Darts for the rest of us.)

My mother walked into a kitchen wearing her clown outfit. It must be said that this, in and of itself, was not weird to us. Mom was a director of Christian education and studied clown ministry. By this time, she had already visited both Todd and I at our respective schools as her clown alter ego, Yes-Yes, to show the kids the merits of a Jesus-y clown and to insure neither of us would kiss a girl for at least another dozen years.

In fact, my father was also fond of dressing up. He had a passing resemblance to Abraham Lincoln and would dress up like Honest Abe for county fairs, chili cook-offs and to give presentations to elementary school students.

What’s that you say? Not every kid has a silent religious clown and a dead president as parents?

No shit.

Anyway, Mom (as Yes-Yes) opened the fridge and took out a gallon of milk that had very little left inside. You could actually see the wheels in her clown brain turning as she thought to herself…”I tell the boys all the time not to drink out of the jug…but there’s only a little bit left. I’ll chug it down and throw the jug away. No problem.”

It’s important to remember that she had this conversation with herself. There was a moment’s pause while she made a thoughtful decision to drink the milk. Had she made a different choice, I might be a lawyer or doctor or some other profession for the well-adjusted…but as it turned out that morning…well-adjusted stopped being an option.

So, she pushed her big red nose out of the way, threw her head back and swallowed the milk in one quick movement.

Apparently, the milk was sour.

We could tell because she immediately lurched her head forward and began throwing up into the jug. The inevitable throw-up tears were streaking the pancake white on her face. The opening made a seal around her painted lips and the jug began to swell and contract with the rhythm of her desperate heaves as it filled with clown vomit.

I’m sure that this only went on for a few seconds…ten max…but it felt like an eternity. We were stuck in our own David Lynch movie with a sick clown we had to call Mom.

After several full-body-clenching spasms and what I guess was about 5 inches of harlequin regurgitation, Yes-Yes ran out of the room, the jug still stuck to her lips and the heaves still coming fast and furious.

(My brother swears that the following moment was when he knew my future would have something to do with the world of comedy.)

As Yes-Yes retreated down the hallway to my parents’ bedroom and the retching sounds finally began to fade as she shut the door, my 4-year-old self turned to my brother and said…

“Well…you don’t see that every day.”

Turns out I was right.

That was the only day I ever saw that.