We aren't born hating mimes. I'm convinced of this. It's something that is a learned behavior, like coordinating your clothing or eating haggis. So whence cometh the mime-hate of late? Why am I hearing mime-hating jokes? Why am I hearing urban legend-type stories about mimes who slash, dismember, and kill? There are whole websites devoted to mime-hate. Mime-hating clubs. Is it because they refuse to talk? Is that what makes them seem somehow warped and unnatural to us? Like maybe they have telekinetic powers or something? I could understand if it were clowns. Clowns are the mime's sinister cousin. Clown-hating is a perfectly common, perfectly respectable pastime these days, and the explanation for it is a simple one--extreme creepiness. On the creepy scale, clowns rate somewhere between Jason Voorhees and those twin girls from The Shining. Have you noticed, by the way, that clown-hating is kind of a generational thing? Boomers have no problem with clowns. A Boomer can see a clown and not be disturbed in the slightest. He or she might even respond with laughter and merriment (presumably, this is the clown's goal). It's Gen X'ers and younger who have taken issue with Ronald McScary and his terrifying henchmen. But I'm straying from my original question, which is: why do we as a culture hate mimes so much? Is it just a natural outgrowth of the clown thing, a sort of Jungian color-bleed of our psychological laundry?

I suspect it's because mimes always seem to be up to something. Clowns just seem like raving lunatics, prancing around and making balloon animals and squeezing bicycle horns. At least you know what you're getting with clowns. Mimes, on the other hand, always seem to have an agenda . . . and that agenda always has something to do with a box. Getting into a box, getting out of one, moving the box around, etc. What is that about? Are they helping their invisible friends move? Are they making some sort of commentary on the human condition, pointing out how we create obstacles for ourselves where none exist? Are they re-enacting Office Space? Seriously, what's the rationale behind all this box business? It just makes them seem shifty, like maybe they're planning to stab us with a shiv while we're focused on the "box". I think if the mimes would just set up a press conference sometime to explain it to us, they could probably set our collective minds at ease.

Oh wait. Mimes don't talk. Guess we'll never get an answer.

Tags: scared