In yesterday’s blog I mentioned the various tortures I endured in my three days of working at Spookyworld. One of which was being punched in the balls by a ten year old kid. I wanted to put my tale of sweet revenge into the post but it ended up being a little too long so I thought I’d save the story for today. Here you go!
After an hour of working in the clown maze (read yesterday’s post to catch up) I was getting pretty tired of customers touching me. It was mostly pretty benign with the exception of a shin kick from a drunk chick. I stood motionless waiting for the next group to walk by so I could do my thing and hope to not get touched when a man and his son (probably about 10 years old) walked in. I waited for them to get right in front of me and I jumped down off my pedestal and yelled at them. The kid jumped back, laughed and punched me square in the nuts. I immediately dropped down to my knees and gasped. The dad grabbed his son by the hand and said “alright, let’s keep going.”
Fucking what? This guy’s kid punched a stranger in the balls and no apology? How much did he think we were making because 6-fucking-dollars an hour is not enough for this kind of treatment. I struggled to my feet and decided this little shit needed to be taught some respect.
I didn’t touch him. I couldn’t. The biggest thing that was drilled in our heads by management is that we cannot lay our hands on the customers and now I knew it was emphasized so much because we’d want to. So I didn’t touch him, I followed him.
The museum was at the very beginning of the maze so that left me with ten minutes of intense eye contact and breathing behind his ear. The only time I left his side during the entire maze was to disappear behind him in a hidden door backstage to reappear in front of him. I was inescapable. Everywhere but always by his side, staring right at him. At first he laughed and punched my big rubber nose. I didn’t break eye contact. His laughter grew quieter and quieter as the maze went on and on and I stayed right beside him, staring at him. His dad chuckled and said “looks like you made a new friend”. Wrong, pops. He just made his worst fucking enemy.
They walked out of the maze and I walked out with them, my face mere inches away from the now terrified face of that little cock puncher. There was no laughter now. Only the tugging of his dad’s pants leg and a whimpering plea of wanting to go home. For a minute the dad stopped to watch an animatronic skeleton sing “Living La Vida Loca” while I just loomed over his child. The dad noticed I was still there, laughed, tapped me on the shoulder and said “shouldn’t you get back to work?”
I stood back up, looked at him silently and stooped back down to stare at the kid.
The kid was crying at this point. Tears streamed down his face as he blubbered “I wanna go home I wanna go home dad!” The dad sighed and started toward the parking lot with the kid. I followed. The dad tried to reassure the kid that this was all fake and I was just a guy in a costume but the kid started yelling “I punched him and now he’s gonna get me! He’s gonna get me!” I stopped at the beginning of the parking lot but still stared at the kid as he clung to his dad screaming “NOOOOO!” over and over again at the top of his lungs.
In the three days that I worked Spookyworld this was the only time that I felt a sense of pride about my job. I accomplished something that night. That guy paid $15 to have his kid scared and now that kid’s going to have an irrational fear of clowns his entire life. He may never step in a haunted house ever again because of what I did. I hope that kid had to go to therapy because of me.
I turned away from the parking lot only when the tail lights of their car were no longer visible. About a dozen people were staring right at me. I didn’t even think about it at the time but if one of the actors is terrorizing a shrieking child all the way to the parking lot, there may be a few spectators. I took off my mask, bowed at the crowd and walked back into the maze. I had another hour of humiliation scheduled for the night but I fucking owned that moment.