I See Clowns...

I am a millennial. For reference, a millennial is a person born between 1981 and 1996. There are many things that our generation has lived through that generation Z and the current generation (gen X) either do not remember or do not know about. Let's go back to the early 2000s, shall we? It was an interesting time to be alive, cell phone use was on the rise. Apple gave us the iPod and the iPhone and changed how we listened to music. No more did we have to download music from LimeWire or carry our compact disk players in our pockets and walk a certain way so the song wouldn't skip too much. Pagers were on their way out. Only doctors or street pharmacists had them mostly. Caller ID was now a service that came standard instead of having to pay a separate fee for it. So many new technologies and different ways to seemingly improve one's life.

People started reporting seeing something on the side of the road at night, highways mostly. The story made its way to the local, then national news. This was before the creation of Snap Chat, Instagram and Twitter, so any video footage that was captured was uploaded to YouTube. What were people seeing you ask? Clowns! People were seeing clowns. Families would be minding their business, simply driving along the road at night going here or there, when all of a sudden, a figure fully dressed as a clown would be standing there. Y'all, the figure was fully dressed as a clown complete with white face make up, colorful wig, red nose and big, floppy shoes. The clown wouldn't do anything though, he would just stand there...menacingly, near the road. Like, I think it was scarier for the guy to be just standing around. What is he thinking? Is he about to jump in front of the car? Is he going to jump onto the car? If the windows are down, can he reach in? So many questions. The sightings increased. As with anything, copycats started popping up, or maybe the clown guy brought friends. The clowns started going further, becoming more active. I felt the more "active" clowns were copycats. The copycats started yelling at the passing cars. They began running after passing cars. I have a fear of clowns. Copycats or original, I would have fainted. The fact that these incidents were always recorded and the vantage point the recording was from added to my feeling that they were not the original clown guy. It was still very terrifying though, I'm sure. I remember one copycat ran into someone's house. It seemed to be a group of teens hanging out and the clown runs in and chases them while screaming and such. Another copycat video showed a clown ringing the doorbell of a home. This was long before the arrival of the video doorbell, we had to go to the door to see who was there. The clown would pound on the door. He would pop his face up into the windows of the home. The teens (another reason I say it was staged because there are never any adults in the encounters) are recording themselves screaming and running in fear. It was truly a bizarre time for us all.

Then, as randomly and quietly as he had appeared, he disappeared back into obscurity. Once it all ended, that was it. No one talked about it. There was no more coverage on television or YouTube videos. Did it really happen? The Mandela Effect...I remember you Mr. Clown guy, even if no one else does. Don't come back though...