I'm not talking about anyone in particular, but it seems like every Gen-X or Gen-Y hipster has to take a moment to pontificate about how terrified they were of clowns as children. Please. You weren't anywhere near that scared of clowns and you know it. I'll grant that clowns have a small component of fear to them; I'll even grant that there is a small minority of children that are genuinely terrified by them, but don't pretend that you were one of them. You know damn well that when you were a kid, you were probably clamoring for one of Bingo's balloon animals, just like 99% of all children anywhere.

Childhood clown fear is to our generation what Woodstock is to the baby boomers. If all the people who claim to have been at Woodstock really were, it would have been ten million mud-caked hippies, instead of 600,000. If all people who claim to have been terrified by clowns as children really were, clowning would have been made illegal by 1978.