What is it with kids and clowns? Adults think that kids love them. The circus banks on the fact that kids care about the manic strangeness of masked maniacs. Rich parents always have to hire a clown to entertain at kids parties. What is it with with these made up, macabre, merry Andrews?
Most kids hate them.
Even before the television adaptation of Stephen King’s IT, Batman fought his evil clown enemy The Joker. Each child builds up their phobias in their own way. As for me and my phobia, it started well before “Poltergeist” came along.
I don’t know whether to blame my father or my mother. One of them (and they stand united in blaming each other) hung a picture of a clown over my bed as a child. Crafted with cut pieces of felt in vibrant primary colors, the clown’s big head and shoulders took up most of the frame with its wide eyes and huge grin. The guilty artist even put a distant circus scene in the background. Such a happy little scene alone would not have caused my heart to skip beats.
Add a little glow paint around the eyes and grin…
Bedtime did not come easy at my house. I knew that going to bed meant being alone with my two greatest nemeses: my older brother and that clown. My older brother never hurt me, per se, but he would have watched gleefully as the glowing eyes and wicked grin crawled out of the picture frame and devoured me in minutely painful nibbles.
I always fought the call to go to bed. I spent as much time brushing my teeth as I could. I became very picky about which pajamas I should wear to bed. Would the blue horses protect me better from certain fear? Or would my Snoopy fuzzies (with feet) be the answer? I tried to get my mom and dad into the habit of reading to us before we went to sleep…but they thought that reading the Bible or War and Peace would take away from whatever havoc parents raged after their children go to bed.
Eventually they would turn out the lights and close the door…leaving me to my own feeble defenses to pass the night. They usually ceded to my pleas to leaving the door open a crack and keeping the hall light on until I went to sleep. In retrospect, I am not sure that the light helped much. I could not look up, for that would engage the evil of the clown. I could not close my eyes; I did not want that clown to come at me with no fair warning.
My first option was to look towards the light peeking through the slender crack that my parents provided. I saw the same repeated images: someone walking up the hall towards our room. I don’t know who it might have been, but it was a large and wide person with either a hairy face or a ski mask. So a killer in a ski mask, Bigfoot, or Bigfoot in a ski mask became my only logical choices. Why did they sell ski masks in every K-mart if only the bad guys used them?
My next choice to diverting my eyes away from either the evil clown that would come out of the picture frame, or the oft repeated bulky stalker never quite made it to my room, was to look straight ahead. Any way I could figure it, I was dead. Towards the foot of my bed, on the opposite wall, the ever-open closet lurked. In daylight I could see the big sliding doors kept themselves jammed open with spilling toys, books, and never-worn clothes. Let in just a trickle of light from the hallway at night and I could see the closet for what it really was: the doorway to a world filled with tentacled beasts looking for small, dark-haired boys on which to snack.
At some point, every night, I would burrow deep into my covers, and pile my pillows and stuffed animals on top of me. I know now that it showed poor character, using my precious animals as shields to save my tiny hide. I really felt that I had no choice, and I made the choice every night.
I spent years with this as my frightful status quo. Even until I had finished grade school and prepared to enter the ever-confusing life of junior high school. That summer came the change. That summer came “Poltergeist.”
My brother and I went to see the movie. They rated it PG, and we were big enough to see such movies, so we went. The movie confirmed every fear that I ever had…and helped to create new ones. The malevolent clown, the voracious closet, the toys that terrorized the room, the television static, spirits meandering about the house…all of it corroborated. And I knew all along that something was not right with the tree outside of my bedroom window.
We came home late in the evening and I had already made up my mind: I would never set foot in my room without light again. When I went in to get ready for bed, the clown mocked me. I could hear its hollow cackle echo in my head. The closet licked its lips as I ran past it. The same thought pranced through my brain over and over again: no…not tonight…not ever again.
I sat up as late as I could. When my dad played his go-to-bed-or-get-spanked card, I seriously considered the spanking. Instead I told him that I was scared. He agreed that the movie might have been a bit much, and let me sleep in his room that night…and the next…and the next…
On the fourth morning, a Saturday, he finally played his biggest trump card: go-to-your-own-room-and-go-to-bed-tonight-and-I-mean-it. With his hand on his belt I could not argue against his position. I sat in my room all day and formulated a plan on how I would survive the night. I had most of the elements in place, I just needed a weapon. Then I saw key to my survival: my football.
I invited the clown to play a game of catch. Who knew that it would be so fragile? The clown screamed like breaking glass when the ball struck it. It slid behind my bed and I could hear the weeping, wailing, and gnashing its teeth in its death throes. Dad came in and lamented the loss of the precious clown, never once caring about the torment it inflicted on his second son for the whole of that boy’s life. I took the spanking well and spent the rest of the day in my room as a punishment. That’s okay; it was all a part of my brilliant plan. Over the next few hours I cleaned out the closet so that the door would close. I then jammed the door shut so that no tentacles could open the door at night and take me while I my false sense of security lulled me to sleep.
That night, bedtime came, and I did not fight it. I stripped down like an Indian warrior and prepared for the final battle to come: the stalking shadows. Phase three of my plan came when my dad asked if I needed the light on so that I could sleep.
No. Not that night. Not ever again.
I had him close the door, and keep the light off. In the darkness, the complete darkness that came with bedtime, nothing threatened to maul, grab, or eat me. For the first time in my memory I fell asleep without a pile of blankets, pillows, and stuffed animals on top of me. I slept the sleep of the brave: the same sleep that comes from a young Indian boy after his first buffalo hunt. My hunt did not include bows, arrows, and bison. My weapon: the football. My prey: the glowing clown of death. I slept victorious.
Most kids hate them.
Even before the television adaptation of Stephen King’s IT, Batman fought his evil clown enemy The Joker. Each child builds up their phobias in their own way. As for me and my phobia, it started well before “Poltergeist” came along.
I don’t know whether to blame my father or my mother. One of them (and they stand united in blaming each other) hung a picture of a clown over my bed as a child. Crafted with cut pieces of felt in vibrant primary colors, the clown’s big head and shoulders took up most of the frame with its wide eyes and huge grin. The guilty artist even put a distant circus scene in the background. Such a happy little scene alone would not have caused my heart to skip beats.
Add a little glow paint around the eyes and grin…
Bedtime did not come easy at my house. I knew that going to bed meant being alone with my two greatest nemeses: my older brother and that clown. My older brother never hurt me, per se, but he would have watched gleefully as the glowing eyes and wicked grin crawled out of the picture frame and devoured me in minutely painful nibbles.
I always fought the call to go to bed. I spent as much time brushing my teeth as I could. I became very picky about which pajamas I should wear to bed. Would the blue horses protect me better from certain fear? Or would my Snoopy fuzzies (with feet) be the answer? I tried to get my mom and dad into the habit of reading to us before we went to sleep…but they thought that reading the Bible or War and Peace would take away from whatever havoc parents raged after their children go to bed.
Eventually they would turn out the lights and close the door…leaving me to my own feeble defenses to pass the night. They usually ceded to my pleas to leaving the door open a crack and keeping the hall light on until I went to sleep. In retrospect, I am not sure that the light helped much. I could not look up, for that would engage the evil of the clown. I could not close my eyes; I did not want that clown to come at me with no fair warning.
My first option was to look towards the light peeking through the slender crack that my parents provided. I saw the same repeated images: someone walking up the hall towards our room. I don’t know who it might have been, but it was a large and wide person with either a hairy face or a ski mask. So a killer in a ski mask, Bigfoot, or Bigfoot in a ski mask became my only logical choices. Why did they sell ski masks in every K-mart if only the bad guys used them?
My next choice to diverting my eyes away from either the evil clown that would come out of the picture frame, or the oft repeated bulky stalker never quite made it to my room, was to look straight ahead. Any way I could figure it, I was dead. Towards the foot of my bed, on the opposite wall, the ever-open closet lurked. In daylight I could see the big sliding doors kept themselves jammed open with spilling toys, books, and never-worn clothes. Let in just a trickle of light from the hallway at night and I could see the closet for what it really was: the doorway to a world filled with tentacled beasts looking for small, dark-haired boys on which to snack.
At some point, every night, I would burrow deep into my covers, and pile my pillows and stuffed animals on top of me. I know now that it showed poor character, using my precious animals as shields to save my tiny hide. I really felt that I had no choice, and I made the choice every night.
I spent years with this as my frightful status quo. Even until I had finished grade school and prepared to enter the ever-confusing life of junior high school. That summer came the change. That summer came “Poltergeist.”
My brother and I went to see the movie. They rated it PG, and we were big enough to see such movies, so we went. The movie confirmed every fear that I ever had…and helped to create new ones. The malevolent clown, the voracious closet, the toys that terrorized the room, the television static, spirits meandering about the house…all of it corroborated. And I knew all along that something was not right with the tree outside of my bedroom window.
We came home late in the evening and I had already made up my mind: I would never set foot in my room without light again. When I went in to get ready for bed, the clown mocked me. I could hear its hollow cackle echo in my head. The closet licked its lips as I ran past it. The same thought pranced through my brain over and over again: no…not tonight…not ever again.
I sat up as late as I could. When my dad played his go-to-bed-or-get-spanked card, I seriously considered the spanking. Instead I told him that I was scared. He agreed that the movie might have been a bit much, and let me sleep in his room that night…and the next…and the next…
On the fourth morning, a Saturday, he finally played his biggest trump card: go-to-your-own-room-and-go-to-bed-tonight-and-I-mean-it. With his hand on his belt I could not argue against his position. I sat in my room all day and formulated a plan on how I would survive the night. I had most of the elements in place, I just needed a weapon. Then I saw key to my survival: my football.
I invited the clown to play a game of catch. Who knew that it would be so fragile? The clown screamed like breaking glass when the ball struck it. It slid behind my bed and I could hear the weeping, wailing, and gnashing its teeth in its death throes. Dad came in and lamented the loss of the precious clown, never once caring about the torment it inflicted on his second son for the whole of that boy’s life. I took the spanking well and spent the rest of the day in my room as a punishment. That’s okay; it was all a part of my brilliant plan. Over the next few hours I cleaned out the closet so that the door would close. I then jammed the door shut so that no tentacles could open the door at night and take me while I my false sense of security lulled me to sleep.
That night, bedtime came, and I did not fight it. I stripped down like an Indian warrior and prepared for the final battle to come: the stalking shadows. Phase three of my plan came when my dad asked if I needed the light on so that I could sleep.
No. Not that night. Not ever again.
I had him close the door, and keep the light off. In the darkness, the complete darkness that came with bedtime, nothing threatened to maul, grab, or eat me. For the first time in my memory I fell asleep without a pile of blankets, pillows, and stuffed animals on top of me. I slept the sleep of the brave: the same sleep that comes from a young Indian boy after his first buffalo hunt. My hunt did not include bows, arrows, and bison. My weapon: the football. My prey: the glowing clown of death. I slept victorious.
