How I Was Traumatized for Life at Age 3

The Howdy Doody Show was one of the first TV programs for kids. One of my very first memories is going to see the show live at Rockefeller Center. I was approximately three years old and sat with the rest of my peers in the famous Peanut Gallery.

I recall all of this vividly.

Our part of the set was a few rows of seats off to one side. Parents watched from some perch off in the distance. The show played out in front of us. On TV it looked like a real world of sorts, but in person it was all cameras and wires and monitors surrounding a small and fairly barren stage on which cavorted Buffalo Bob, an assortment of puppets and, among a handful of humans, the silent demon, Clarabell the Clown, originally portrayed by Bob Keeshan.

Part of Clarabell's silent schtick was spraying Buffalo Bob with the contents of a seltzer bottle. On that fateful day, when the other Peanuts and I were rollicking in the stands doing our best to respond to BB's exhortations to cheer the proceedings, as always Clarabell was poised for the attack. But on this day, instead of spraying Buffalo Bob with his seltzer bottle from hell, he accidentally, and unexpectedly, squirted me.

I immediately broke down in a coulrophobia-fueled panic. I have not cried so much since. Nothing anyone on the staff, not Buffalo Bob and certainly not that child spritzer Clarabell the Clown could calm me. Finally my parents arrived at the Peanut Gallery from, where, the Elephant Gallery?, and took me away, still in tears, weeping inconsolably over losing my belief in television heroes.

I never went to another Howdy Doody show.

Bob Keeshan, on the other hand, went on to become the legendary Captain Kangaroo. By the time that show came around, I was too old for it, thank God, because the few times I did watch it, perhaps staying home sick or whatever, even at the ripe old age of seven I realized that this was, shall we say, on the slow side. Then again, it was the 50s. Life was slower then.

The premise of the show was that Captain K was a grandfatherly figure, and that little kids naturally responded a certain way, and vice versa, to grandparents. The show lasted about thirty years, so I guess the premise was a good one. This clip is indicative of the show as one saw it back in the day, slow and in black-and-white. It's even got the Cap'n's venerable sidekick, Mr. Green Jeans.



In a remarkable feat of triumph over adversity, I recovered from my duel to the death with Clarabell, and grew to have no fear of clowns whatsoever, except for the one played by Tim Curry in It. Today is Bob Keeshan's birthday, and in all seriousness, his work as a pioneer of children's TV, and his gentle persona inhabiting the young lives of three decades of kids, is worth celebrating.
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