Panic in the park

Oh man, I'm in trouble! The school sent out a mass email the other day warning kids of wearing clown masks to school on Halloween and kindly stated that making someone suffer anxiety for a few laughs is not acceptable.

Oh geez, apparently the school has no idea how our house works on Halloween because we thoroughly enjoy scaring each other and the more anxious one of us gets, the more laughs we get. Is it mean? Ya, sorta. But is it funny? Totally!

My oldest has been scared to death with all the recent clown stories but I have not taken any of it seriously, despite her attempts to convince me that there are clowns hiding in our alley or lurking in the trees in the nearby park. She's sort of dramatic anyway, so I'm not surprised she's all panicky about it but I think the whole deal's stupid and I haven't lost a wink of sleep because of it.

She, on the other hand, won't even go out to the garage after dark, nonetheless, drive around town. She's dead certain if she's driving at night, some killer clown is gonna start chasing her down the street.

The other night, on our drive home from church, after the sun had set, we saw a few ladies walking near the park. My daughter stated in pure shock, "I can NOT believe those ladies are out walking at night with all the clowns around! That is dangerous!" I laughed at her ridiculous clown theories and she proceeded to remind me that I am clueless and they're out there! So ... I decided to test her theory. "How about we swing through the park and check?" And then I took a hard left off the street home and pulled into the only road that led into the pitch black and abandoned park.

"NO, MOM, NO!!" she screamed and grabbed my right arm, squeezing it out of anger, not fear. "What? I'm just showing you there are NO clowns." I tried telling her while hiding the smirk on my face. As I barely creeped our truck down the road, she continues to yell while smacking my arm, "MOM, get OUT of here! It's NOT funny!" Her out of control craziness only caused her sisters and I to laugh harder at her and the 14 year old even got it on video.

The clincher, that might have scarred her for life, is when I tried once more to convince her for the last time that there was not a killer clown in our neighborhood park, by rolling down all the windows and yelling, "Clowny??" like you would a lost dog. I figured if I yelled for them and they didn't pop out from behind the trees, then perhaps she would finally realize they WEREN'T THERE, for Pete's sakes, and all of this clown nonsense was simply that ... nonsense.

Backfire! She freaked out even more and if that 16 year old girl could have got on my lap, she would have. As soon as her window rolled down, she was up and on the middle console screaming, "MOM, roll it up, I mean IT! Her sisters were rolling laughing in the backseat at how fast she jumped out of her seat and the more she screamed, the harder we all chuckled. But, I decided stopping the vehicle and getting out, might have crossed the parenting line, so I rolled the windows up and we headed up to our house. She survived! We all survived! No killer clowns roaming the park and sure enough, there weren't any lurking around our house either. Phew!

We sure did get a hearty laugh afterwards though, even her, and thank goodness we had some video to relive her panic attack in the park. So, anyway, when I read that statement from the school, I kinda giggled. Oops! Making people anxious just for a good laugh is not appropriate? News to me.

Guess that's something my house will have to work on over Halloween.

Better hope no clowns show up trick-or-treating!