I didn’t write the book on love, but a romance novel—that’s an entirely different story. I totally feel like that’s something I could do, but in my case, it would definitely need to be a romantic comedy. Let’s see if I can come up with a meet cute and a rough outline for one. It obviously needs to be something far-fetched, you know, for comedic value. Here’s what I have so far:
“Everybody Loves a Clown”
Sir Charles “Chuckles” McJester, the Duke of Merriment and Laughter, is a clown for a traveling circus. He makes children merry with his hilarious antics, but behind the painted-on face, he is truly sad. He longs for a woman to marry and have his children. Someone who can bring him merriment for a change. All that changes when he meets Violet Bliss, an animal rights activist set on shutting down his circus.
It’s love at first sight when he sees her passing out flyers in the fairgrounds. He works up the courage to approach her, his oversized shoes make a flopping sound as he walks. Chuckles hands Violet Bliss a flower. As she bends over to take a whiff, he squirts her in the nose with water. At this point, she is pretty displeased, but he quips, “Hey, it’s just a splash of affection!” In an attempt to redeem himself, he makes her a balloon animal, which she then pops. He jokes, “Guess that relationship was full of hot air!”
Any kind of romantic future for these two seems bleak until Chuckles starts helping her sabotage the circus. Violet Bliss starts opening up to the possibility of romance. Things are going great until Chuckles’ ex-girlfriend, The Bearded Lady, gets jealous and decides to do some sabotaging of her own. One night, after Violet Bliss sees Chuckles and The Bearded Lady in the kissing booth, she decides to break off the affair.
As their big-top love seems to have hit rock bottom, Chuckles discovers Violet Bliss has been kidnapped. He soon learns it was Barnaby Barnum, the circus owner, fed up with Violet’s attempts at shutting him down. Chuckles, with the help of The World’s Strongest Man, a trapeze artist, and a miniature horse, comes to her rescue. He explains what she had seen was another clown meant to look like him kissing The Bearded Lady. “It was all smoke and mirrors, and a lot of beard wax!”
He then tells her that when they first met, she popped his balloon animal; now it was his turn to pop something. He gets down on one knee and proposes, saying, “Will you be the ringmaster of my heart?” They get married at the fairgrounds where they first met, with a bear on roller skates as the ring bearer. Together they change the circus, removing all the live animal acts. As they ride off into the sunset on a unicycle built for two, Chuckles can’t resist one last joke: “I guess you could say we’re the main attraction now!”
So, what do you think? I realize this might not exactly be romantic comedy gold and is a little fruity, but at least it wasn’t about fruits or vegetables this time. Am I right?
