Monday, February 26, 2007

Coulrophobia 3: The Real Thing

I just received this comment on my post Coulrophobia 2: The Cull. It's worth highlighting as a separate post. It's from Sandra M.

'I have just seen your posting on coulrophobia. This is not a cheap joke but a fact that a teacher at a local primary school suffers from this to such an extent that on Red Nose Day, no child is allowed to display a red nose. When the children have a Dressing up in Fancy Dress day to raise money for charity, no child in the school is allowed to dress as a clown or wear face paint or a mask as the woman has a phobia about these as well. When a visiting theatre group visits the school, another teacher or a teaching assistant has to take her class pupils into the performance and sit with them.I not denying that the woman has genuine problems but I feel she needs to sort herself out rather than have the entire school revolve around her phobia. Surely this sends out the message to pupils that people will put themselves out to accommodate your needs? Life isn't always like that.What do other people feel?'

3 comments:

  1. If this gets out, surely every kid in the school will come in sporting a Ronald McDonald mask and bellowing "Send in the Clowns". And on being given a rocket by the Head, will say "Sorry miss, was only clowning around" etc.

    Never, ever reveal a weakness to children.

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  2. Well, I wonder what she would have done in Soviet Union? Guess she can not go to a football match - Arsenal, Liverlpool or Manchester United are out.

    So, she was never in London then - no red double deckers. Nor did she see old telephone boxes. How did she ever get to school?

    All together, I think this is a great put on. If the teacher is getting away with it, I think the rest of the colleagues have an affliction - I call it being gullible.

    "Gullibility is a widespread product of people’s failure to properly apply reason, logic, and skepticism to a claim or idea."

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  3. It's all a folk memory ...

    Plague days

    and

    Irish fairies

    2. The Merrows: Seen as little horn less cows but really they have fishes tails and wear a red cap (cohuleen driuth). The men have green teeth. green hair,pigs eyes and red noses-women are beautiful and prefer human mates.
    ...

    and we haven't brough our kids up proper - this is pure magic...

    Angry clown

    ...
    Red noses are a fucking target for kids. They see you wearing a red nose and their single-minded focus becomes to get your red nose and run away with it.
    ...
    The message of this story is clear: clowns are your friends but fuck with them too much and they’ll find a way to get into your psyche and destroy your mind.
    ...

    It used to be policemens' helmets

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