clowns and mascot outfits

okay, i’m going to talk about the coworker and mascot outfits…
there are a couple of things i’ve kind of got quirks about. well, a couple that i’m about to talk about. they’re not full on phobias or uncontrollable responses or anything, just urges or feelings. neither one of these are all that uncommon either. the first is clowns. the second is people in mascot outfits (or any person dressed up in a full body outfit, though they are usually of an animal or some kind of team mascot).
clowns make me uncomfortable for a couple of reasons. the first is they have this garish makeup that is painted to look like a big smile, or frown, or whatever, and they wear outlandish clothes. neither of these go on the positive side of my comfort scale. you have no idea what’s going on with them underneath all that makeup and those loud, weird clothes.
the second (and bigger) reason is that being dressed as a clown gives people the freedom to do socially unacceptable and bizarre things, including being rude, stupid, tricky, etc. i’m not a big fan of not knowing what someone might or might not do. especially when it can be completely outside the bounds of any normal socially accepted behaviour. but because they’re dressed like clowns, suddenly everyone thinks it’s okay.
clowns are sort of like a socially acceptable version of an insane person…you know, like the half-naked, unshaven guy in the dirty trench-coat carrying a ping pong paddle and a half empty bottle of thunderbird (and what’s in it is yellow, smells bad, and probably warm), screaming stuff to the sky, singing undecipherable nonsense, and giving you the evil eye. just put some garish makeup on the guy and suddenly he’s the entertainment for children’s parties. it’s just not right, i tell you.
so i don’t like the clowns so much. a fear of clowns is a well-known phobia in society — i just have a healthy fear. don’t hate ’em, don’t freak out uncontrollably around ’em — i’d just rather them not be near me or interact with me.
as for the mascot outfits — it’s not so much that i don’t like being around them…although they do exhibit some of the same traits as a clown. come to think of it, i think clowns are more creepy while mascots are less threatening…pissed off clowns are scary while pissed off mascots are funny…. okay, back to matter at hand…it’s not so much that i don’t like being around them, it’s that i have a very strong urge to want to tackle them and punch them.
c’mon, who hasn’t seen videos of this stuff? who hasn’t seen two mascots in a fight and thought it was hilarious? who hasn’t seen some guy tackle a guy in a full body outfit and laughed at the scene? and surely you’ve seen small children attack or tackle someone dressed up in a mascot outfit. this is all common culture stuff. (think i’m joking? try going to youtube.com and do a search for “mascot fight” and see what you get.)
well, i’m one of the people who have that tendency. i think it’s hilarious. as a good example: last year at xmas a coworker came through the office dressed in a huge full body frosty the snowman outfit — i had a really difficult time not tackling him or knocking him to the ground. and i would have been laughing my fool head off the whole time just picturing the scene in my mind.
so what does this have to do with my coworker? being aware of this quirk of mine, he rented a full body mascot outfit of a dalmation dog and wore it at work on monday. (he was going to wear it on halloween but i was going to be in training so he wore it monday for me.) he did it with the knowledge that i would be tackling him. so several times on monday at work our coworkers got to turn the hallway corner in the office and see me chasing down and tackling a large human-sized bipedal dalmation. i even got a carpet-burn on one of my elbows. but man, it was worth it to be able to take down and pummel one of those things.
my coworker claimed he was doing it for me, because he knew how giddy it’d make me. whether it was actually just altruistic on his part or not, i really did enjoy having the opportunity to do it without the fear of retribution or being sued.