I was never a particular fan of clowns in my Snot-Nose Days...but neither was I terrified of them, as so many children apparently are.
Stephen King mined the Scary Clown lode pretty thoroughly in his novel It, a book that bears one of the more creative titles he has used over the years. I wasn’t all that impressed with It, which, to my taste, is not one of the stronger books in the King canon. But the image of Pennywise, the evil clown that lived in the storm drains, must have resonated with many readers.
“And we’ll have Tim Curry play him in the TV miniseries!”
“Aggggghhhhh!”
I first tasted of the Evil Power of Clowns back in the fall of 1981, when Elder Daughter (at the time, Only Daughter) was a mere seventeen months old. It was Hallowe’en, and we dressed her up in a set of Chinese silk pajamas that I had brought back from one of my trips to Hong Kong. She loved it.
Then I decided to becostume myself. This, alas, was a mistake.
I put on a white shirt and black pants. No problem. But then I put on whiteface, Marcel Marceau style, and committed the egregious error of letting Elder Daughter see me. She almost burst a blood vessel from shrieking in terror.
Months later, SWMBO handed Elder Daughter a magazine so that she could be occupied looking at pictures while Mommy vacuumed the house. When SWMBO turned off the vacuum cleaner, she could hear E.D. wailing. The child had been right there in the room all the time, but the vacuum cleaner had drowned out her screams - when SWMBO picked her up to comfort her, she could see what had triggered the episode of Toddler Fear: an ad for a cosmetic mask that showed several women wearing goop on their faces, looking an awful lot like Daddy did that horrible Hallowe’en night. Gaaaahhh!
To this day, mimes give Elder Daughter the Shit-Willies...and I blame myself. [Of course, mimes give pretty much all rational people the Shit-Willies, even the Educated Mimes with degrees. From the Colorado School of Mimes, natch.]
But aside from this incident, I never had any issues with clowns. I don’t take ’em seriously. After all, we at Chez Elisson use the term “Bozo” to refer to pubes - specifically, the ones that stick out from the sides of the bikini bottoms of Unwaxed or Unshaven Women.
Some folks, alas, still have difficulty getting past their fear of clowns. To those people, I say, “Do not look below the fold!”
Stephen King mined the Scary Clown lode pretty thoroughly in his novel It, a book that bears one of the more creative titles he has used over the years. I wasn’t all that impressed with It, which, to my taste, is not one of the stronger books in the King canon. But the image of Pennywise, the evil clown that lived in the storm drains, must have resonated with many readers.
“And we’ll have Tim Curry play him in the TV miniseries!”
“Aggggghhhhh!”
I first tasted of the Evil Power of Clowns back in the fall of 1981, when Elder Daughter (at the time, Only Daughter) was a mere seventeen months old. It was Hallowe’en, and we dressed her up in a set of Chinese silk pajamas that I had brought back from one of my trips to Hong Kong. She loved it.
Then I decided to becostume myself. This, alas, was a mistake.
I put on a white shirt and black pants. No problem. But then I put on whiteface, Marcel Marceau style, and committed the egregious error of letting Elder Daughter see me. She almost burst a blood vessel from shrieking in terror.
Months later, SWMBO handed Elder Daughter a magazine so that she could be occupied looking at pictures while Mommy vacuumed the house. When SWMBO turned off the vacuum cleaner, she could hear E.D. wailing. The child had been right there in the room all the time, but the vacuum cleaner had drowned out her screams - when SWMBO picked her up to comfort her, she could see what had triggered the episode of Toddler Fear: an ad for a cosmetic mask that showed several women wearing goop on their faces, looking an awful lot like Daddy did that horrible Hallowe’en night. Gaaaahhh!
To this day, mimes give Elder Daughter the Shit-Willies...and I blame myself. [Of course, mimes give pretty much all rational people the Shit-Willies, even the Educated Mimes with degrees. From the Colorado School of Mimes, natch.]
But aside from this incident, I never had any issues with clowns. I don’t take ’em seriously. After all, we at Chez Elisson use the term “Bozo” to refer to pubes - specifically, the ones that stick out from the sides of the bikini bottoms of Unwaxed or Unshaven Women.
Some folks, alas, still have difficulty getting past their fear of clowns. To those people, I say, “Do not look below the fold!”
©1997 Georgia Maher.
[More demented art like this is available at the website of Georgia Maher, the Texas Art Chick.]
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