By Kate Seegraves

Staff Writer

Even when he’s not entertaining, Careful the Clown arrives in style.

Careful, also known as New Carlisle resident Craig Jarratt, travels around town on a Segway vehicle. His rainbow-colored glasses, black bowler hat and “Off Duty Clown” pin signal a man for whom fun isn’t just a hobby – it’s a passion. He clowns at parades, at nursing homes, at community picnics and birthday parties. He’s even the president – or “boss clown” – of a local clowning organization, the Giggles and Grins Clown Alley.

Why does he do it? Simple, Jarratt said - because it makes people happy.

“I like the idea of bringing sunshine into people’s lives,” Jarratt said.

Jarratt hasn’t always been a clown. Originally born in Denver, the Tecumseh High School graduate said he grew up bashful as his Air Force family bounced around the world, from the United States to Germany to Morocco and back again.

“I was always really shy,” Jarratt said. “The last thing I ever wanted to do (in high school) was join a theater department or be in a play,” he said.

Clowning first entered his life in the early 2000s. At the time, Jarratt worked for the IRS, and was taking Spanish courses at Fairborn High School through the Greene County Career Center. Through a woman who cooked for his parents at the time, he learned the career center offered clowning courses, as well.

“I checked into it, and sure enough there was a clown class there, the Clown College of Comedy Knowledge, so I signed up,” Jarratt said. “I wasn’t a class clown, but I was always really creative and had a good sense of humor, so I fit right in.”

Jarratt completed the courses in 2004, and has been clowning regularly ever since (his wife of five years, Gerry, also attended clown school with Jarratt, but has since become interested in dog training). It took Jarratt a couple years to develop his character, he said. He describes himself as “a walk-around clown.” Some clowns have acts, some do magic and some specialize in balloon creations. Jarratt prefers to work a crowd by walking around. He carries props in his pockets, from special paper necklaces to a squeaky rubber chicken. People he interacts with receive stickers that read “I met a clown today.”

And why the moniker “Careful the Clown?”

“Things just pop into your head,” he said. “I tell everybody that when I was little, I was always attracted to bright, shiny things, and whenever I’d go toward something to investigate, my mother would holler, ‘Careful! Careful!’ The name stuck. I’m just glad she wasn’t hollering, ‘Don’t touch that!’ Or else I’d be ‘Don’t Touch That the Clown.’”

The past several years haven’t all been a big gag for Jarratt. He continued clowning even as his father took ill in 2007 (he used to visit his dad at the hospital in costume, then visit with nurses and other patients). That same year, he also continued through his own illness, prostate cancer.

Presently, Jarratt is cancer free. He continues his clowning adventures around the New Carlisle area – his next events, with the Giggles and Grins Clown Alley, are the Holiday at Home Parade in Kettering on Sept. 6 and the Tipp City Mum Festival on Sept. 25.

If you see Jarratt there, in full clown regalia, you can bet he’ll be working hard for a smile or two, he said.

“I don’t go for a big laugh. All I’m looking for, all I’m listening for, is for someone to say, ‘That’s funny,’” he said. “Or to hear somebody groan. There’s an old saying in the clown community that a groan is as good as a laugh. That’s all I try to do: to put a smile on people’s hearts.”