Bobo was airborne. Flailing while falling. His boutonniere blasting a water spray arc that glinted light from the big tent spotlights. Oversized, floppy bright red shoes undulating under forces of gravity and motion. His painted smile was wide, to an eye experienced with the antics of bobo even wider than usual.

He was a master of the art. If there wasn’t the cacophonous circus music blaring over the tent speakers an audience member might just be able to hear the sounds of his digitized fart machine being executed at just the pitch and frequency necessary to elicit laughter from even the stodgiest onlooker.

Just before his impact with the dusty floor below, a ripcord was pulled which jettisoned Bobo’s blue and white pants into the crowd with a heavy SWOOSH noise, revealing the stock and trade heart shaped boxers of the professional clown.

Then came the ground and so also went Bobo’s smile. He’d known before the show that this was his final act of his long and historic clowning career. It was bittersweet, both his career situation and the taste of the dust that pillowed upwards after the impact. He wouldn’t need to pick up the giant pants after the show, he wouldn’t need them. His life would be full of normal sized clothing from now on and he left the fart machine in a bin marked ‘Bobo’ in the attic.