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Let me break it down for you.
- Picture of clowns = Ok (my mom had a Mr. Bojangles clown painting...loved it)
- Ronald McDonald = 50% ok
- Clown figurines = -100% NOT ok
- Clown in real life = -10000000% NOT ok
Clowns are supposed to be jovial drunks (hence the red nose) who stumble about and are fools. I can deal with that. For no reason, I had this moment of "WTF!" when I realized that you can't distinguish facial features. This fear was not brought on in my younger years, no...it fully developed in my late teens for no reason what so ever.
And if anyone says it's because of the movie "IT", stop right there, I've never seen that movie.
So imagine if Charles Manson broke out of prison tomorrow and then put on a clown get up. Hell, he could be standing by a "MOST WANTED" poster of himself and you wouldn't know it was him because his face is all painted, and he's wearing a big poofy fro.
I've tried to quell this aversion to clowns, trust me, I have. I've told myself over and over that clowns are people too (even though that balloon Uzi probably is real).
At one point in my life, My mom, two sisters and I, moved into a 3 bedroom house. My sister and I shared a room and our youngest sister got her own room. She had this shelf on the wall and guess what? She collected clown figurines, and not only cute jovial clown figurines, she collected clown figurines that I SWEAR the eyes followed you through her room.
At one point, we switched rooms and I got my own room, yet...the shelf stayed in there. I kept asking them to take it out, but they always said "ooooh there's so many figurines and the shelf is soooo heavy, just leave it up, it's not hurting anything."
OH but it WAS!
Every night I went to sleep under the ogling and nefarious gaze of 100 little painted clown eyes, until one night, riiiiight as I was on the verge of a deep sleep...*BLAAAAAAAAAAAAAM*
The ENTIRE shelf fell off the wall and catapulted clowns at me.
Now, they tried to tell me that the walls were thin and the weight of the shelf MUST have finally made the screws come loose from the wall,
But I knew...
...it was the clowns.
I gleefully went about my life, thinking "eh" about clowns until one day, while at my work (at an amusement park) I was opening the games for the day.
The sun was shining, and the air was perfect. Just crisp enough that you might need a jacket, but enough sun that it kept you warm...pure perfection. I had opened a game called "Duck Pond" and had just released 20 some odd little rubber duckies with sunglasses on them to swim eternally in a circle.
Life was good.
I walked towards the downhill area of the park, gleefully gazing into the distance and taking in the absolutely PERFECT weather (did I mention this day was PERFECT?!), when all of a sudden *squish*.
Not like "ewwww I stepped on something" squish, but "OH man! I stepped on something/someone/animal" squish. I figured a towel or a shoe had been left behind in the path and I had accidentally stepped on it, so I broke my gaze (and all of this happened in about .002 seconds) and looked down...
To a...big red shoe?
"WELL OW-OW-OW HA HA HA!!!" came this booming voice, punctuated with a *HONK*HONK* from a bike horn, and I turned and was face to face with a clown.
I was later told that it "Bozo" the clown, although it wasn't technically "Bozo" it was our state's 'version' of Bozo, and he was there in the park doing a children's event.
I should have laughed, or played it off or something. But instantly, everything in my life came up...because I was FACE TO FRICKEN FACE with a clown and my first thought was "you stepped on his foot, he's going to kill you and nobody knows what he really looks like!"
"WHY HI THERE *HONK*HONK* I'm Bozo!"
"o_O.......................AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH!!!!!!!!!! *runs away*"
That's right. 19 years old, and I ran away screaming like a toddler. And I didn't stop screaming when he was out of site, either. I screamed all the way across the park, and into the compound where the employees stayed, I screamed up that hill too, I screamed until I hit the guard shack gate and was clamoring trying to get out.
although, you can't just "get out" you had to swipe your employee badge for the gate to unlock, but there was NO time for that during massive panic.
I was eventually surrounded by a few of the managers, and talked down from climbing the fence while still in a high pitch wailing session. My boss assured me, that I would be kept away from the clown, and she would see to it, that my schedule did not coincide with the clown's schedule...meaning I wouldn't turn around buying a corn dog, and painted mass murderer was standing behind me or anything.
I thought that was awfully kind of her, but I forgot that she was delightfully evil and locked my fear of clowns away in the back of her mind and it would come back later to haunt me (literally).
She told me I handled the situation well, my run-in with Bozo. I told her I was almost 20, I shouldn't be scared of clowns. She said back to me "you handled it better than Leslie, and she's almost 40." I looked over to another manager, who was in a ball against the building, rocking back and forth crying and muttering through sobs "nobody told me there was going to be a clown here, why is there a clown here?!?! Who hired that clown?!??!!"
Ok, so at least I'm not that bad.
In ending this entry, I'll share her evil pay off to my unbelievably unrealistic fear of clowns.
See, she was the type of boss, that if you said "I don't like doing this" you ended up doing it for a month, because she would always say "you love doing it, you just don't know it yet."
Halloween came, and she asked me to work. I said sure, thinking I was going to be running a game (since that was my job). I was informed that I was going to be in the haunted house. There was a gag where there is a 'body' on the table and a mad scientist cutting up the body. I was to be tied up, and when groups of people came by, I had to start screaming "help me!" because I was next.
Blah blah blah, typical low budget gag.
They get me all tied up, and the guy walks in who's the mad scientist and we get to chatting (which, it's kind of awkward to carry on a casual conversation with a mad scientist when you're tied to a giant beam). My boss came through and said "Did they really tie you up?"
"Yeah, it's kinda nice, I don't have to like hold my arms up all night, they're just there"
"So you can't get out or anything?"
"No I can't move at all, so don't forget me at the end of the night haha"
The most WICKED grin came across her face and she said "GOOD!" and had the mad scientist leave. He was then replaced by an EVIL CLOWN COVERED IN BLOOD!
WITH A MACHETE!!!!!!
"WHAT IS THIS?!"
"You think you hate clowns"
"I KNOW I HATE CLOWNS!!"
"WELL THEN! This will give you a valid reason to hate them!! have fun!"
Oh the people loved it, "wow this is SO realistic!"
I literally screamed for my life the entire night. And it didn't stop at "Help me!" I was pleading with people:
"HEY! HEY! HELP ME! GET ME DOWN!!! PLEASE THE CLOWN IS GOING TO KILL ME!! I'LL DO ANYTHING! I'LL CLEAN YOUR CAR!!!"
"HEY MAN!!! YOU GOT CATS?! I GROOM THEM! I'LL CLEAN LITTER BOXES!! PLEASE!! GET ME OUT OF HERE!!!"
Ahh...god, I'm so tense right now...
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