Meet Cleo, the Crazy Christmas Clown
We can all agree, clown dolls are creepy.
OK, lets move on.
Several years ago, my kids and I were at a local flea market where vendors sold everything from – well - they just sold everything.
As we passed one vendor, I noticed my son Danny saw something and he side-stepped to his left, then continued on his way. A quick glance at the table, and I knew what spooked him – a wild-haired blond clown, with multi-colored clothes, absent a foot.
I bought it.
Of course, I didn’t tell Danny that I bought it.
Back at his mom’s house, while Danny was distracted elsewhere, I placed the clown on his bed, head on pillow, turned his gaze toward the door. Next time Danny entered his bedroom, he was greeted by the crazy clown that followed him home.
The clown has been in his room ever since.
Why?
Well, we’ll get back to that.
This was not my first encounter with a scary clown doll.
When I was married to Arlene we had a harlequin doll (not sure why, or how we acquired it, but we had one). At times, I would move it around the house, so it would pop up in odd and unexpected places. The last one I remember was in our upstairs bathroom, with the clown on the toilet (seat down) and a cassette player (yes, I said cassette player) plugged into the light-switch. When Arlene went into the bathroom and flipped the switch, the cassette player blasted, “GET OUT!” in a loud, guttural voice.
And yet, with all that, our marriage didn’t survive.
Arlene has two great-nieces, or whatever they are called when your niece has kids (I could never get that stuff straight).
Last Christmas, as Arlene and the one great-niece played (running around the halls) Arlene went into Danny’s room, and when she emerged she held the clown out in front of her. This scared Arlene’s sister Joanne enough that she fell backward, and the great-niece stopped in her tracks, pointed and screamed, “you’re ugly!”
Whether she screamed at the clown or Arlene is up for debate.
This past Christmas Day, Arlene once again had a family party, and her two great-nieces would once again be in attendance. To avoid a repeat of last year’s fright, Cleo was taken out of Danny’s room, and hidden in plane sight somewhere in the living room.
Later that evening, well after dinner and more than a few drinks, the story of the previous Christmas clown encounter was told.
“Where is she now?” I asked.
I was told she was in this very living room. After a quick scan, I found her, nestled next to a festive dressed Christmas Bear.
Someone asked, “Why don’t you just get rid of it?”
Let me set a picture about the room. Besides the few older adults, the living room was filled with late twenty-early-thirty somethings.
After the question “Why don’t you just get rid of it?” someone went to grab the clown doll and a collective chorus of “NO!” filled the room.
Apparently, the general feeling in this group was that if you were to get rid of the doll, destroy it, the evil will transfer to the person that killed the clown.
Did I mention that more than a few drinks had been consumed?
Thoughts on what to do with the clown got tossed around the room.
“Burn it!”
“Bury it in a block of cement!”
“Drown it in the pool!”
Fortunate for Cleo, cooler heads prevailed, and she was able to survive the potential Christmas Day massacre.
Today, Cleo is safely back in Danny’s room.
How she got back in Danny’s room is anybody’s guess since no one was willing to move her.
Maybe she just got homesick and walked back to the room by herself.
