Wednesday, January 16, 2008

I hate clowns . . . and I am not alone

Don't send in the clowns

LONDON (Reuters) - Bad news for Coco and Blinko -- children don't like clowns and even older kids are scared of them.

The news that will no doubt have clowns shedding tears was revealed in a poll of youngsters by researchers from the University of Sheffield who were examining how to improve the decor of hospital children's wards.

The study, reported in the Nursing Standard magazine, found all the 250 patients aged between four and 16 they quizzed disliked the use of clowns, with even the older ones finding them scary.

"As adults we make assumptions about what works for children," said Penny Curtis, a senior lecturer in research at the university.

"We found that clowns are universally disliked by children. Some found them quite frightening and unknowable."

Clowns are scary as hell. All three of my kids hated clowns. They are bizarre, creepy, hiding behind their make-up. There is nothing cute about them. The scariest clown for me is Wizzo from Bozo Circus. When I was a Brownie Leader, we took my daughter's troop to the Bozo Show at WGN studios in Chicago, I worried all the way there that Wizzo would be there. Lucky for me, it was just Bozo and Cooky, and that was it. If I would have had to walk past Wizzo during the Grande March, I would have cut ahead of everyone and run out the door.



10 comments:

Spirula said...

Three words.

John Wayne Gacey

Spielberg even incorperated his childhood clown fears into the movie "Poltergiest".

Anyway, this is the only good clown

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gl8wVEbrZ7U

Stardust said...

LOL...good one spirula!

The only good clown....is a

well, watch the video.

Spirula said...

I was going to write

Shorter Stardust: "Cram it clown!"

but didn't know if anyone knew that (ancient, like me) story.

Stardust said...

"Cram it Clown?"

Tommykey said...

"They all float down here!"

Stardust said...

"They all float down here"

That book...and the movie scared the crap out of me almost as much as Salem's Lot.

Spirula said...

The urban legend of "Cram it clown"

http://www.snopes.com/radiotv/tv/bozo.asp

Stardust said...

spirula, omfsm...I wish I could have seen that!

When I was at the Bozo Show with the Brownie troop, Bozo was a big crabass. He was barking at the children in the hallway as we waited to go inside. He shouted, "shut up and listen" and "I need 12 kids for games....put your hands down, NO hand waving!" The producers picked the kids in advance for these games, and everything was very businesslike and not fun at all.

My co-leader and I suspected that Ol' Boze was hitting the sauce before we got there. Cooky just seemed extremely depressed.

tina FCD said...

What the heck was that second one?

Anonymous said...

OMG LMAO!!
When you first mentioned that kids didn't actually liked clowns, I immediately thought of that "clown" from the movie "IT", a terrible rip-off of a Stephen King novel.