Pin-Pin le Clown

During the month of April, when I was in full romance with my first (and now ex) boyfriend, I got the habit of writing him letters and making little doodles to let me see his big toothy smile. One of those drawings resulted in Pin-Pin le Clown.

My boyfriend has his own term for idiots and that was "Pin-pin." He used it disparagingly whenever he spotted someone, whether it was on television or on the street, who looked like he lacked intelligence.

I'm sure that if he were asked what he thought about the French soccer team, he would respond: "Oh, those guys are just a bunch of pin-pins."

To me, the term sounded like a name for a clown. So, one day, I drew my first sketch. In this initial drawing, Pin-Pin did not have a large smile. Nor did he have a frown. He was simply expressionless. Boyfriend criticized that because he wanted Pin-Pin to not be sad. From that day, I began making a series of Pin-Pin le Clown drawings for him in which he never had a negative face. I presented my cartoons to my ex if he had had a bad day, and I loved seeing how his gloomy attitude changed in an instant.

Pin-Pin always has something cheerful to say, even when he was once drunk and surrounded by empty green bottles of beer and was caught by a police officer.

Barb the French Bean