The preceding dredged up a similar memory from my own childhood. I was eleven or twelve, and my family had just purchased a new set of dishes. For some bizarre reason it was decided to break all the old ones. The first I knew of it was walking into the kitchen and having a plate tossed to me, which of course I promptly fumbled and dropped. It shattered on the linoleum and theyall laughed like hyenas. We spent the evening throwing plates, bowls and cups back and forth and dropping them; sometimes on purpose, sometimes from laughing too much.
You'd think this would be a happy memory of a family having innocent fun, but truth to tell the recollection is an uncomfortable one, and I haven't thought about it for all of my adult life till now. Children are in essence primitive creatures, and in primitive societies the Clown is a creature of nightmare, the ghostly figure who breaks all the rules and whose behavior is therefore unpredictable and frightening. I remember my family as straight-laced and repressed for the most part-it was the fifties, after all- and the occasional outbreaks had an air of hysteria.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dancing_Plague_of_1518 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_L%C3%A9vi-Strauss