George was a pirate, but he wasn’t a very good pirate.
He wasn’t a very good clown, either.
But every Christmas, he’d dress up in his clown outfit and visit the kids in the hospital.
He tried to juggle, but he dropped the rubber balls.
The balloon animals would pop halfway through the twists.
He was just pathetic.
But the kids laughed, which is all that mattered.
They’d make drawings of him, a clown on a pirate ship.
He tacked them up around his bunk, and he’d read the letters while out at sea.
Until his return the next year.