When I was young, I was obsessed with Stephen King. Every time I went to the library I would scurry past the books I was supposed to read, spine-tingling page-turners like “The Boy who Solved The Mystery of The Missing Baseball,” and head right for The Shining. I read everything I could get my hands on: Christine, Salem’s Lot, Carrie, Firestarter, Misery, Pet Cemetery — all the classics. That was until I discovered It. Stephen King’s It, you see, was really fucking long. I wanted to read it, but my love of horror was butting up against my love of laziness, and 1,000 pages felt like a lot to get involved in. Yes, even then, I had commitment issues. As fortune would have it, there was a TV movie of It being shown at the time, so I decided that I’d watch it, and if I was still intrigued I would go back and read the novel. That’s…when this happened.

Holy fucking shit. After that, I would never read Stephen King again. Or go to a circus. Or close my eyes. I mean, look at that guy! To this day, I don’t understand why Pennywise the Clown, It‘s horrifying monster, was allowed on regular television. Honestly, just searching for that image made me kinda nervous. Now, as a grown man, I’m not afraid of clowns, but I am still afraid of Pennywise – so anything that vaguely resembles him freaks me out. It’s problematic around Halloween, or at children’s birthday parties, but hasn’t really been an issue with Internet dating.

Until now.

I mean, come on, How Is This My Match?!

87 year-old woman

seeking men 65-80

There is a woman dressed in a clown suit and she is going to murder me and eat my face!!! And, wait a second, what’s this…she’s 87 years old? I guess you don’t really notice a person’s age when they’re dressed like your worst nightmare. Interesting technique, OKCupid, and I would applaud your ingenuity if I weren’t too busy loading a shotgun and pointing it under my bed. Where Pennywise is known to live. Along with his Mom, this crazy lady.

Seriously though, I don’t mean to be making fun of what seems to be a very nice woman, whose profile talks about singing in church and loving the musical theater, but how is this an appropriate match for me exactly? She’s 87 years old. Did our answers about lifestyle, morality, and…dare I say…sexual interests really coincide? If they did, I gotta make an appointment with my doctor. I mean, are 87 year-olds permitted by medicine, or God, or Wilford Brimley to be having sex at all? You know what, don’t answer that question. I don’t want to know.

It crossed my mind that the profile may be fake. OKCupid is known to have plenty of users who post phony pages, just for the sake of, I don’t know, wasting their lives? But she has several other photos that are totally normal, and it seems the clown get-up was just to add a little flair. Terrifying, terrifying flair. She looks great for her age, truly, but that’s going to be of little comfort when I wake up screaming in the middle of the night, every night, for the rest of my life. Why do the white gloves make it so much creepier?! I can’t stop looking at them! Well, I hope the children’s party she was going to was a success, or at the very least, they all have really short memories.

It’s not your fault, sweet scary clown lady. It’s Stephen King’s fault. And OKCupid’s. Because I know if it were up to you, you would totally join me in saying…

How is This My Match?!