Send out the clowns

by RAF KATIGBAK

I’m not sure why, but fear seems to be a popular topic of conversation lately. Just last night, sparked by a friend’s recent experience of going to see The Golden Compass alone in a completely empty Cinema Guzzo at 10:30 a.m. (actually fucking frightening if you think about it), the small dinner party I was attending started a round of, “What is your worst fear?”

Naturally, there were a variety of phobias. Some were understandable (drowning, being buried alive in an avalanche), some heartfelt (dying alone), and some not so serious (a sequel to Brokeback Mountain starring Jean-Claude Van Damme and Steven Seagal). When my turn came around, I hesitated. You see, my greatest phobia wasn’t something rational like getting hit by a semi-truck or falling through ice or getting stabbed by someone in a Steve Urkel mask at a Mexican buffet—it was something called Coulrophobia, aka the fear of clowns.

When I finally mustered up the balls to tell everyone, every single person sat in silence. I thought I had just successfully alienated everyone at the table and upped my pussification quotient by 112 per cent, but then each and every person sitting around me said, “Oh my God, me too!”

According to experts, “sufferers often acquire Coulrophobia from a bad experience as a child or through associations from the media.” Everyone at the dinner had a story of being traumatized by these painted-faced fools (personally, I blame both Stephen King’s It for creating the frightening Pennywise character, and the Insane Clown Posse for putting out really, really excrementally bad music).

Finding out others shared this fear came as a HUGE relief. For the longest time, I thought I was alone in my clown-o-phobia. As a kid, I would shy away when my parents would offer to take me to the circus. I’d make up lame excuses like I was allergic to elephants and that I thought acrobats jumping through flaming hoops and juggling chainsaws were sooooo last year.

I even refused to go to McDonald’s. I gave the excuse that I didn’t like the food, that it was bad for you. The truth was that I didn’t care about my diet, I actually liked the food (I was so addicted to the french fries, I probably would shoot them into my eyeballs if they made a liquid version), but Ronald McDonald scared the living shit out of me. I knew there was something wrong about him. I mean, nobody could be that nice, and the way he acted around kids was more than a little suspicious. And we all know that Grimace is a bruise (purple, misshapen), right? But where did this bruise come from? Don’t tell me you fell down the stairs again Grimace, we know Ronald was involved. You can tell us.

Recently, I found out that this phobia is bigger than I thought. A University of Sheffield study conducted last month wanted to find out what kids found scary about hospitals. Was it the needles? The food? The weird machines that go “ping!”? No. It was the fucking clowns. Of the 250 respondents surveyed, aged four to 16, even the older ones said clowns were scary.

You know what I say to that? It’s about fucking time. Who decided clowns were fun or cute or harmless anyway? When were clowns ever NOT scary? It’s time that our generation rise up and tell the older people decorating our hospitals, daycares and baby accessory stores that we don’t want their stinking clowns, that we’ve NEVER liked their clowns and that we’re mad as hell and we’re not gonna take it anymore!

Then again, maybe it’s good to be scared. Should we be coddling kids in hospitals? Perhaps kids need to learn the value of life. And what better way for them to learn how precious life is than by making them feel their lives are threatened? Maybe it’s time we embrace our fears and put them into hospitals.

In fact, perhaps we should make hospitals even scarier. Let’s make those doors look like mouths of giant demons. Let’s get those doctors to dress up as Leatherface from Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Let’s pipe horror movie soundtracks (or Insane Clown Posse) through the PA.

In the end, perhaps it’s better if kids don’t come out of there crying, “I thought hospitals were a nice, friendly and safe place, then someone stuck me with a needle.” Maybe instead we want our kids coming out of there saying “Wow. I thought getting a flu shot would be bad, but it was nothing after shitting my pants when I thought that fucking clown was going to stab me.”

Riff-Raff@sympatico.ca