I don’t like clowns much, and I can pinpoint my Not Liking Clowns to a specific date and time. It was Sunday, December 26th 1982, at a friend’s eleventh birthday when we celebrated it by going to see Poltergeist. And the moment that possessed clown doll attacked Robbie and Carol Anne in the film, that was the moment I can safely say I lost all Clown Appreciation.It didn’t help that I owned a clown doll which my mother had lovingly sewn for me as a toddler. “Sneaky” was his name, dubbed for the sneakers he wore on his ragdoll feet. Only when you’ve just watched a jingling, sneering clown doll attack a kid your age on the big screen, “Sneaky” suddenly takes on a very ominous tone.
That evening, it was with new suspicion I eyed the expression on Sneaky’s face and I wondered where I should exile him. First I considered my closet.
Er... no.
And under the bed was no better option. Eventually, I slipped into Grandpa’s room and put Sneaky in his closet. Let him deal with the supernatural clown-oriented phenomena. I would show him that's what you get when you eat all my Halloween candy every year and cheat me at dominoes!
Yes, justice was served.
Interestingly, my friend whose birthday it had been—we’ll call him Joe-- was suffering from a similar clown conundrum.
Years before, Joe’s mom had decorated the kids’ bathroom in… a circus motif. She’d hung red and white striped wallpaper to look like a circus tent, added some other decorator touches and did two things that are burned into my memory…
One was she hung this Emmett Kelly clown doll from the wall. The other was she exchanged the vanity light for a red lightbulb.
To Joe’s mom, it was a cute, kitschy room in a very hip 80s red.
To Joe and I, it was the fiery mouth of a clown-populated hell.
I recall hating to even use Joe’s bathroom when I’d visit. I would hold it for hours rather than spend a minute in Barnum and Bailey’s Toilet of Clown-Infested Doom. The Emmett Kelly was a dangling ventriloquist doll. And he loomed there on the wall, fastened as he was, the hanged man, peering down on us with that sullen expression, glassy eyes, and bathed in blood red light.
I never said anything to Joe about that clown doll until…
Well, let’s zip ahead to Christmas about five years ago. Joe and I are still friends, and I was visiting with his parents, Joe, Joe’s wife and his sister at their house. Somehow we got to reminiscing and the topic of clowns came up. I mentioned Clown Fear as a result of Joe’s Poltergeist birthday extravaganza. Joe came clean to his own coulrophobia, and added, “And remember my scary clown bathroom?”
Well, apparently all those years ago, Joe didn’t like that bathroom any better than I did. And he dealt with it daily.
Frankly, it's impressive he didn't end up in some facility for the very, very nervous, weaving baskets and potholders and twitching every time the color red pops into view. Or an ad for the Shriner's Circus came on the TV.
Anyway, during this discussion, Joe’s mom had left the room and returned with the Emmett Kelly doll. Because, naturally, something innately creepy and fear-inspiring just has to be someone else's prized possession and family heirloom.
So there we were, full grown-ups--Joe married and with his PhD for Pete’s sake, and me about as mature as I was ever going to get--and we found ourselves shouting, “No, oh God, no! Not THAT! Put that thing away!”
Joe’s mom, who had been kept in the dark about the clown issues all of these years, made a surprised, sentimental plea on behalf of Emmett Kelly… “Oh, but I thought he was nice. You didn’t really hate him, did you?”
Ah, but how we did. In fact, it was amazing closure after twenty-some years of disliking that clown doll, to tell it to his face, once and for all, that he'd been no favorite of ours. It probably saved Joe and I thousands of dollars in therapy.
Send out the clowns.
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Humor-blogs is a sure cure for coulrophobia. Just don't ask them to spell it.
