I used to like clowns. I was never one of those people that claimed clowns were scary. I thought they were as funny as hell. Goofy little guys … 20 to a tiny car… fake flowers that spray water and over-sized shoes? What isn’t funny about that? Their slapstick antics would have me gasping for air. I grew up watching Chicago’s Bozo The Clown Show for crying out loud (and he was one of the shiftier looking clowns, I might add).
Bozo the clown. (WGN)
But all of those lighthearted warm fuzzy feelings for clowns eventually went by the wayside. I attribute it to my mother letting me watch It at an impressionable age…
I was around 12 when the television miniseries hit the tube, and I don’t think I’ve seen a villain even close to as creepy as Tim Curry’s Pennywise since. He played the part perfectly.
Tim Curry as Pennywise. (Horrornews.net)
While watching the movie, I wasn’t really that scared. There were definitely moments when I jumped or was shocked by the way the story turned, but all in all, this was not one of those movies that kept me up at night. However, just as Stephen King would have intended, I think its effects were much farther reaching.
We had this little half bath in our mudroom. Every time I used it for weeks after It aired, I would hear voices coming from the pipes beneath the sink.
I would see a balloon and it didn’t bring me joy.
No joy. (Fanbop.com)
I wouldn’t step within 10 feet of a city drain.
Ummm … I don’t think so. (mohagencomic.com)
I avoided origami like the plague.
Origami boat sailing to its death. (thekingofcastlerock.blogspot.com)
And then there were the gloves. I was suddenly seeing clown hands everywhere. I saw a pair of them on our washing machine and screamed. Turns out they were latex. I saw a pair sticking out of our winter glove box in the entrance closet and jumped. Turns out they were just white stretchies. But the worst experience was at my grandparents’ pool.
My grandparents had this custom made oversized swimming pool. It was amazing. My siblings and I would try and help out with cleaning it when we could. And if we were the first to swim that day, it was our responsibility to roll up the solar cover and skim the bugs that had fallen in overnight.
So there I was, all alone, rolling the cover. It was a massive cover and weighed a great deal. It could be a tough job for the sprightliest of pubescent tweens, let alone me. But there I was, slowly rolling it back, inch by inch. Slowly. Carefully.
The sun was getting hotter. Sweat began dripping down my brow. The world was stone cold quiet as I kept winding and winding the heavy reel. The birds had stopped chirping. The cars were no longer moving. It was me and the cover. Finally, there were just inches left to go when there they were, just floating in the crystal blue water: the largest clown hands I had ever seen! I screamed at the top of my lungs and ran out of the pool faster than I’d ever run before. I hopped on my bike and rode all the way home NEVER LOOKING BACK.
Turns out it was a dead mole that had gotten stuck under the pool cover and drowned. His hands looked just like this:
The mole’s GIANT clown hands. Cue the Hitchcock music.
Gave me the heebie jeebies for weeks. However, I was so distracted by the visual of a dead mole with clown hands in my grandparents’ swimming pool that I completely forgot about It. Although I will say I never found clowns funny again after that.
