You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy™
SCARY CLOWNS.
“What’s so scary about clowns?,” the man with the crooked teeth asks. “When we were young, clowns made you laugh. At least they were suppose to.”
I stare at the grandfather. He is a mush mouth. His words are a southern fried mess of consonants and vowels. The words swirl inside his Tennessee mouth like rocks inside a washing machine full of moon shine.
What’s so scary about clowns?
It’s a good question. But now-a-days, at least in these here parts, Clowns are scaring the bejeezus out of people.
Pictures of evil clowns with fangs and mal-intentions are showing up in all corners of the interwebs.
“We had a call just this morning, a report of an evil clown on a bicycle,” the police chief tells me. “It was dawn, and the man was out exercising. He was wearing a blinking reflective vest. Our dispatch was filled with scared calls to 911 about a crazy clown on the highway.”
I stare at the chief who is trying to justify his recent actions to me.
“The other day I sent a squad car to a neighborhood because a scared woman called in after hearing clown music in her neighborhood. It was an ice cream truck.”
I laugh out loud. I can’t help myself.
“An ice cream truck?”
“An ice cream truck,” the chief responds. “After the release the state just put out, I have to respond, even if it is a frivolous waste of time and manpower.”
The release the chief is speaking of was really a tweet from the Tennessee Highway Patrol. It essentially showed a picture of two fiendish looking clowns who quite possibly
just killed a cat or ate a baby’s arm. The narrative warns parents about child abductions by people posing as clowns.
Holy Insane Clown Possee!
Once the Tweet hit the tweetosphere, the idiots lost their ever loving minds.
suddenly all clowns are evil, the spawn of satan, with a hunkering for blood and baby parts.
And then all hell breaks loose when a picture explodes across social media in the tiny town known more for strawberry festivals than evil clown worshippers.
The picture was dark and grainy. It seemed to show two clowns hiding in high grass.
The clowns didn’t appear to be doing anything malicious. In fact, unless you had a magnifying glass, it was hard to tell what the picture was about.
It didn’t matter. Either way, the picture went viral.
“We have 3,000 facebook friends,” the chief says. “We had 60,000 hits in 2 days.”
The chief assigned a detective to the case and within a day they figured out who the 2 clowns were.
They also figured out who the clowns friends were. It was a girl, her husband, his brother, and his friend. They are all in their 20’s and they were playing a joke. They never meant any harm to anyone. Still the police cited them with violating a city ordinance that prohibits wearing masks that might alarm or harm.
WTF?
Really?
I spoke to the girl’s grandmother. She was angry. “I think it’s stupid!,” she says staring into the camera. Her teeth look like broken lincoln logs. “Doesn’t the police have nothing better to do. We have crime, we have drugs and thefts.”
I ask the chief of police. “Don’t you have anything better to do?”
“yeah, I have better things to do,” he says perturbed. “But if people call in reporting evil clowns, we’re going to respond. This was designed to send a message.”
I stare at the chief. I get it. Then again, I don’t.
I think back to what grandpa told me.
“Whose afraid of clowns?”
Halloween is only 32 days away.
Life’s Crazy™