Perhaps you, like me, have a healthy fear of clowns. I don’t know why they’re so damn creepy. Maybe I’m just scarred for life from Stephen King’s “It.”
Regardless, there has been a rash of creepy clown sightings recently, and I, for one, am not particularly pleased.
I took to campus (sans creepy clown mask) to find out what other people thought.
I trudged (I missed my afternoon coffee) up two flights of stairs and spied my first hapless victim: a gloriously curled mustache attached to one Zach Vietz.
“I mustache you a question,” I puffed, “erm, excuse me. I mustache … Umm … I mustache … clowns?”
Luckily, Vietz wasn’t fazed by my verbal ineptitude and was able give a smooth, articulate response. Unfortunately, I was distracted and missed most of it, but here’s the gist of the conversation.
“Something about a clown,” Vietz said.
I spent the next hour surreptitiously asking people in my English class about clowns.
“Pst,” I said, “what’s your opinion on scary clowns?”
I had a few takers.
After lecture was over, I asked my professor about clowns to get a scholarly angle. I think she was disappointed that my first question of the year wasn’t even on course content, but she took it in stride.
“Something about a clown,” professor Taggart said.
Since I was on a roll in the English department, I tracked down a few more English majors.
“Something about a clown,” they said.
Since I had a nice round number of responses, I decided to call it a day. But then I saw some students staring with glazed eyes at an artwork in the Memorial Union Gallery. They were literal sitting ducks. I pounced.
“You know, I think clowns might have been scary back in the 1600s,” said Connor Radebaugh, the eminent clown philosopher.
“But I think it’s probably just a propaganda campaign for the new ‘It’ movie,” Radebaugh noted.
“Anyone with a mask on who runs at you will be scary,” Kami Johnson chimed in, “there isn’t anything especially scary about a clown.”
Well guys, I beg to differ. Clowns are terrifying.
Checkmate. Discussion closed. Over and out. See you on the flipside. Signing off.
Faithfully yours,
– The Features Editor
