Anyone who knows me knows I have this great fear of clowns. In honor of Halloween, I thought I’d make a post about the biggest fear I have aside from who is going to be president in 2012.

Did you read the book by Stephen King called IT? The cover is displayed to the left as you read this post. Honestly, before reading that book, I was a faithful Stephen King reader. I think the book literally scared the crap out of me to the point where I couldn’t even pick up any Stephen King novel. Seriously.

If you’re not familiar with the story, I’ll try not to spoil it for you, but I’m sure you’ve at least had to have seen the TV movie version of the story. Basically it’s a story about people who come back to the town of Derry, Maine to face a horror that no one should ever face. A killer clown.

Now, allow me to say that nothing scares me more than clowns. I wish I had the video of my awesome friends who scared the crap out of me one time with a clown. Allow me to give you an introduction to why they did this. Aside from the fact they were very cruel people.

This was a time when I was in the Navy and we were in Corps School, learning to be future corpsman. Basically a medic, but don’t ever call me that. You can call me doc or a sailor or a corpsman, but don’t ever call me a medic. Anyways I digress.

We would walk to the hospital from our barracks and there was this bridge we would walk over. You could see down below and I remarked to a friend, “Wow, this reminds me of IT and the river the kids would play at. That’s just creepy and scary.” They all knew I had a great fear of clowns, and of crossing that bridge. Mainly because I didn’t want to look down there and see a clown. That would have been horrible.

So one night, I believe it was our last week in Corps School, they decided to scare the crap out of me. They rented a clown outfit, big red nose and all, and a bunch of balloons. Now anyone who’s seen IT or read it, know the clown usually appears with a bunch of balloons and just waits for you by the side of the road. Instead, this time, there was a clown at the end of the bridge. (OMG just writing this is creeping me out. I can visualize it.) Mind you, all this is being videotaped. Because it was so dark, you couldn’t see very well at the end of the bridge. We were happily walking across the bridge when the last lamppost barely highlighted the balloons.

I think the first words out of my mouth were, “a-a-are those balloons?” I was frightened. It was then that the clown stepped into the light better and I just screamed. Screamed like a little girl, screaming out, “OMG it’s a clown! It’s a clown!” I remember getting behind one of my friends and pushing him forward. The clown got closer and closer and by then, I knew it was a setup, but I was still frightened. The clown still creeped me out. And I think I might have peed in my pants a little.

Yoshi is much better now and but still has weird dreams where clowns take over the world. Ronald McDonald is the ringleader of them all.