BLOUNTVILLE, Tenn. – Before she took them for a ride in an imaginary car made of four chairs and a zebra-print-covered steering wheel, Wiggles the Clown reminded a group of kindergarten students to buckle up and use a child booster seat.
It’s a lesson Wiggles and her partner, Officer Carolyn Crabtree with the Sullivan County Sheriff’s Office, have taught to students at several schools since last spring. They stopped by Phyllis Nottingham’s class at Blountville Elementary School on Thursday.
“You know you have to ride in booster seats so you don’t have any problems in the car,” said Crabtree’s partner, who worked at the Sheriff’s Office before she attended a special clown school in New Jersey and became Wiggles the Clown.
The trip only cost taxpayers $235, the clown said, because she stayed with friends and family members while in New Jersey and paid for her own meals.
Wiggles and Crabtree then continued their education last year by becoming certified child passenger safety technicians after taking a special course offered by the Tennessee Traffic Resource Service in Jonesborough, Tenn.
The two deputies now try to make two trips a month to various county schools so they can teach the fundamentals of car safety to students like the ones in Nottingham’s class.
At each of these trips, they remind students to use a booster seat until they are 9 years old, or 4 feet, 9 inches tall, and that they should sit in the back seat of a car until they are 12.
“Everybody’s going to go home and tell mommy and daddy they want to ride in a booster seat because you don’t want to make Wiggles sad if you get hurt,” Crabtree said before she gave Nottingham’s students stickers and coloring books about car safety.
Since they started offering the car-safety classes, Crabtree and her partner have branched out so they can cover other topics like bully awareness and stranger danger – a series of precautions children should take when they run into a suspicious stranger.
Wiggles said being a clown helps her relate to the children on their own level, which makes them more comfortable when she or Crabtree talk with them about these topics.
“Remember, policemen are your best friends,” the clown said.
gmclean@bristolnews.com | (276) 645-2518
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