Let’s face it, no one really likes clowns. It’s amazing that they’re still around, haunting us, stepping on our feet with their comically over-sized shoes and exceeding the occupancy limits of compact cars in a flagrant disregard for the law. They’re shameless, soulless and, let’s face it, probably the same guys that play Santa in the mall at Christmas.

So, it probably comes as no surprise that, as a child, I was terrified of clowns. We all were. Those who say they weren’t are probably Replicants and should be caught and terminated immediately. Someone find Rick Deckard, quick.

In my bedroom, on the nightstand next to my bed, was a lamp that my mother had painted in her ceramics class. It was a circus clown. Now, we lived out in the middle of the country in northern Minnesota. In the winter, when the winds would pick up, they would slam against our house in the middle of the night, knocking tree branches against window panes and making ungodly howling noises as they whipped across the plains. None of that bothered me. I slept like a baby. Being that I was only a few years removed from being one, that comes as no surprise, I guess.

But, as soon as my mother presented me with that ceramic clown lamp, I became an insomniac. I’d lay awake for what seemed like hours, huddled under the covers, terrified to stick my head out for fear that the clown would come to life and get me. I’d make my parents leave my bedroom door open when they tucked me in for bed, so I had a unobstructed escape route if and when I needed it.

Of course, this totally backfired, because the light from my parent’s bedroom would dance down the hallway to my room, projecting an ominous shadow of the clown against the wall opposite my bed, which only made me sink deeper under the covers, coming up only now and then for air.

In my head, I’d picture this gigantic shadowy clown, with fiery eyes, waiting at the edge of my bed, one hand full of balloons and the other full of a chainsaw or something awful. The bastard was going to kill me if I so much as stuck my head out from under those covers. I knew this to be a fact. Clowns are evil.

So, after enduring months of this torment at the white-gloved hands of this monstrous ceramic clown on my nightstand, I decided that I had to act. I’d tried telling my mother that I didn’t want it in my room anymore, but the crestfallen look on her face completely defeated that tack. She’d made it for me with the hopes that I’d like it, because it’s a clown and parents think that kids like clowns, for some weird reason. So, that was out of the question.

It would have to be destroyed, somehow. But I couldn’t do it. It would break my mother’s heart if I did. I started to think of scapegoats. The dog wasn’t allowed upstairs, so I couldn’t peg it on him. It just “falling” off the nightstand was out of the question, because it was on a rather sturdy nightstand, so I couldn’t argue that the nightstand was “wobbly.”

But I did have a baby sister…who was just learning to walk…and had already shown glimpses of what would become a lifelong propensity for clumsiness. An innocent baby who didn’t know any better, it was almost too perfect.

So, at the earliest opportunity, I arranged to have the two of us playing in my room. The play escalated to awkward chasing and running about. Within a few minutes, she lost her balance near the nightstand, flailed her stubby little Michelin Man-arms and knocked the lamp off the table, sending it crashing to the floor. I made sure to catch her before she fell on the shards of ceramic that skittered across the hardwood. I may have been calculating enough to set her up, but I wasn’t going to let her get hurt.

My mom rushed upstairs to see what had happened, only to find me trying to console my crying baby sister while simultaneously trying to hide my smile of satisfaction. She was too scared that my little sister might have been hurt to even think twice about the lamp.

The clown was dead.

It was replaced with an unremarkable, plain lamp. My nights were once again nights of uninterrupted sleep and contentment. I no longer hid under the covers, occasionally daring to peek one eye out at the nasty clown that smiled maniacally at me. I was free.

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