The Happy Clown
BY ALICE ELEANOR JONES
This was a century of peace, plethora and
perfection, and little Steven was a misfit,
a nonconformist, who hated perfection.
He had to learn the hard way....
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, December 1955.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Steven Russell was born a misfit, a nonconformist, and for the first five years of his life he made himself and his parents extremely unhappy. The twenty-first century was perfect, and this inexplicable child did not like perfection.
The first trouble arose over his food. His mother did not nurse him, since the doctors had proved that Baby-Lac, and the soft rainbow-colored plastic containers in which it was warmed and offered, were both a vast improvement on nature. Steven drank the Baby-Lac, but though it was hard to credit in so young a child, sometimes his face wore an expression of pure distaste.
A little later he rejected the Baby Oatsies and Fruitsies and Meatsies, and his large half-focused eyes wept at the jolly pictures on the jarsies. He disliked his plastic dish made like a curled-up Jolly Kitten, and his spoon with the Happy Clown's head on the handle. He turned his face away determinedly and began to pine, reducing his mother to tears and his father to frightened anger.
The doctor said cheerily, "There's nothing the matter with him. He'll eat when he gets hungry enough," and Steven did, to a degree, but not as if he enjoyed it.