You know, before I start delving into Stephen King's works and extrapolating nuggets of wisdom (that I doubt he would pay attention to, given my propensity to idly ramble), I just want to say that growing up, reading his books for over thirty years has to be regarded as a bit of a life lesson in itself. This man, this teacher of fear, taught me not only about Cthulhu, New England geography and what really scares me, but about human nature itself and let me tell you - I'm still in school. But truth be told, King has a grasp of the human condition that is fairly detailed and grimly realistic. Sure, he's able to open doors between worlds and let some eldritch beasties in every now and then, but sometimes the worst monsters are just people who you'd expect to be regular folks. Somehow, King seems to know about them. With this in mind, it's a good bet that he must have picked up some life knowledge that found its way into many of his books that we can apply to our lives.
12. Clowns Are Scary For A Reason - IT
There are two lessons we can learn from this tale of growing up in apparently one of the scariest places on Earth: Bangor, Maine, USA. The first is fairly basic: clowns are scary for a reason. I'm not saying that all clowns are secretly interested in growing giant teeth, popping your meaty joints out of their sockets and scraping the flesh off with them. But clowns are supposed to make us laugh when we need to. Essentially, a clown is a figure we can regard as trustworthy and comforting which makes their betrayal even more frightening. Look at John Wayne Gacy, for King's sake. That man ruined the friendly, fun-loving image of a clown for an entire generation of Americans. Hence King's Pennywhistle the Clown a grotesque and distorted betrayal of what should be a pleasant and trusted figure in a kid's life. Of course, whenever trusted figures in the community clergy, teachers, police officers, etc., deviate from their responsibilities, that truly frightens us. That's what Pennywhistle is supposed to tap into and that's why clowns are scary.
John Kirk is a Teacher-Librarian and currently a History/English Teacher with the Toronto District School Board.
But mostly, John teaches Geek.
Comics, Sci-Fi (Notably Star Trek), Fantasy and Role-Playing and table-top games all make up part of John’s repertoire, There is a whole generation of nerds-in-embryo who rely on him to make sense of it all, to teach that with great power comes great responsibility, that the force will be with us always and that a towel IS the most useful thing to have in one’s possession.
When John isn’t in the classroom, he can be found in his basement writing comic reviews for www.popmythology.com and features for Roddenberry Entertainment's www.1701news.com.
