X equals clown

I don't like clowns.

Actually, that's an understatement. Clowns give me heart palpatiations, make me feel like I'm choking and cause me to be totally irrational. I fear them. I don't have many irrational fears. I don't like bugs, mice and snakes, but I wouldn't say that I fear them. I fear death, but I think that's a pretty rational thing to be afraid of. I used to be afraid of graveyards, perhaps a manifestation of my fear of death, but I got over that and have moved on, I don't like them, spend as little time as possible in them, but there's nothing that a graveyard can actually do to hurt me.

I used to be afraid of dogs, but I've managed to reduce that fear to dogs that can kill me and since dogs can sense fear, I figured it would be good to get that fear under wraps should I ever encounter a pit bull. That, and a golden retriever in with a bandana around it's neck is possibly the cutest thing ever. Who could possibly be afraid of that?

Basically I'm left with two irrational fears. Birds and clowns. I've been working on the bird fear, since M seems to have become a bird whisperer. Mind you, he hasn't seen The Birds, and I challenge anyone to trust those feathery things after watching that movie.

Clowns, I just can't get over. Clown in cartoons, that actually talk are okay, like Krusty and Sideshow Bob. Real, live, adults who choose a life of clowning, and speak only in grunts or horn honks are scary. Even Ronald McDonald gives me the creeps. The only thing worse than a clown would be a bird dressed as a clown

It troubles me to say this, but clowns are an occupational hazard at my work. I've been here for a year and I've managed to avoid the clowns. I see one coming, I take another route. I hear them come into the office, I hide in my cubicle. They freak me right out.

This Thursday, I may have to confront this fear of clowns. I may have to spend more than 1.5 hours with one, possibly two, clowns for a shoot. I am doing this because no one else can. Most of the rest of the department is in high level meetings, or away for the Jewish high holy days and the rest, I can only assume, aren't qualified. Which leaves me vs. The clowns.

I have an anti-anxiety pill in a little case that used to carry around in the days of panic attacks. It was like my "in case of X open case." It's been in my medicine cabinet for many years now, as anxiety attacks have been blissful absent from my life. I might have to carry the pill case around on Thursday, just in case.

Today's sing-a-long song: "Something wicked this way comes" by Barry Adamson

HRH