I will shoot a clown in the face if I have to.

I have a confession to make. I hate clowns. I don't dislike clowns or think they're creepy or get mildly uncomfortable when they're around. I HATE them. If I saw a clown walking across a foggy highway in the middle of a backroad in Eastern North Carolina at 2:30 in the morning I would run that son of a bitch over and not think twice about it. I'm not kidding.

It's called Coulrophobia and it's a real fear. Greg probably thinks it's funny. Greg can get bent.

Krusty does not frighten me. Pennywise makes me scream in terror. I will cross the street to avoid walking past a grate in the curb because that creepy bitch is not going to grab my leg and rip it off like he did that little boy's arm. No we do not all float down here, you fucking psycho.

I thank my lucky stars nobody at the party dressed as a clown Saturday night or I'd have had to hide in a corner and cry all night. Really, I'm not kidding. I think it's the idea of a fake smiley creature trying to seduce little children with candy and balloon animals. Screw that. Evil fuckers.

My students can't know this. You can never show them your weakness. So today when a student drew an evil clown on my board at the end of yearbook class I had to pretend it didn't bother me. I didn't look at it directly, just cheerfully told him to erase the board as soon as he drew it so that I wouldn't have to clean it later. Then I turned around to shut down the computers and one of them has now been evil clown wallpapered. I looked at the evil clown. He looked at me. I looked at the ceiling as I switched the screen to tulips. Ahh, tulips. Beautiful, nonevil tulips. You are all that is holy and good in this world.