Clowns? Seriously?
Of all the things in the world I'm supposed to be worried about right now, from a nuclear North Korea to the reality that someone is actually going to win the upcoming presidential election to the fact that the part in my hair is starting to widen, particularly in the front, I'm now supposed to worry about clowns.
Clowns?
Annoyed by clowns, yes. After all, clowns are mimes with rainbow-colored wigs and no particular tendency to try to get out of an imaginary box. If you've seen 20 or so of them climb out a tiny little car once, you've seen it a thousand times. As far as I'm concerned, the world is divided into two groups: Those who are bothered by clowns and 5-year-olds.
But I could be wrong. If it weren't for clowns, what would people answering those ads in the back of magazines draw to prove they could get into a fly-by-night, for-profit art school that never, ever turned anyone down, including the guy whose submission looked like a Rorschach test or the one who drew a stick figure? OK, besides the puppy. Or the pirate.
If it weren't for clowns, who would we paint by numbers or reference when we talked about Congress?
On a serious note (hard to say while we're talking about clowns, but you get the idea), they do provide comic relief for a lot of folks, many of whom could really use it. You can't swing a rubber chicken without hitting a clown at a children's hospital. The kids seem to love them and enjoy having them around. So, Mr. Snuggles, there's one for you.
And, despite my earlier delineation of the world in general, there are lots of adults who like them. There are lots of adults who like boiled crawfish, too. I mean, this is America, where each of us is allowed to be as wrong as we choose to be.
This, apparently, is also a country where people dressed as creepy clowns (for some of us, a needless redundancy) are being, well, generally creepy. In fact, some of them are being downright dangerous, which is a pretty bad idea, big red nose or not.
All across the nation we're getting reports of people dressed as clowns and running the gambit (pretty hard to do in big floppy shoes) from irritating to criminal.
All of this is an indication of our over-fascination with the macabre and the darker parts of the human condition. It also goes to show why we can't have nice things. Or flowers that squirt you when you bend down to smell them.
Seriously, there are scary clowns roaming the streets. What, are we living in a Batman movie now? And not a cool one with psychological underpinnings and discussions of the nature of obsession. No, one of those where the Bat Suit has nipples and Arnold Schwarzenegger is a ... cough, cough ... famous scientist.
And what's next, big killer fluffy bunnies menacing Easter Egg hunts? Cupid shooting real arrows on Valentine's Day? A giant Leprechaun running around on the sidelines of a football game ... wait, never mind about that one, Notre Dame fans.
What all this says about the nation is open for debate. Or maybe it's because of the debates. Or the general climate of undefinable unease and instability many people are experiencing.
Perhaps in a world that scares you, for some people the answer is to be scarier still, to dress up in grotesque customers and yell "boo" at all the things that terrify you in an effort to get in the first shot.
Or maybe it's just that someone decided to act like an idiot, a condition that spreads faster than Swine Flu and for which, apparently, there is no vaccine.
Whatever the case, chances are between now and Halloween, we're going to be inundated with stories about Psycho Clowns creeping around neighborhoods. And we might even have a few actual "situations" that will cause all this to rise above plain goofiness to the level of real-life bad behavior.
As with most trends, the passage of time will probably cause the Parade of Creepy Clowns to run its course. I mean, really, after a while, applying that much greasepaint is going to get tedious.
And if that doesn't do it, all the would-be clowns are going to run face to face into a hard reality. It's political season and they will have a hard time grabbing attention from the professionals.
Commentary on 10/07/2016