When I was 9 I went to the carnival with my parents. All my other friends had gone, but they went without their parents so I wanted to be like them and separate from my Mom and Dad. After much pleading I talked my Mom into letting me go off and play some of the games. She gave me a handful of tickets and told me to meet her back at the refreshment stand after I was done.
The first place I went was the game where you fire the water-gun into the mouths of the clowns, causing the balloon on their head to expand and explode. The first one that is destroyed wins a prize. Well, I had never seen the game in action, I had only noticed that you got to shoot a water gun and that was enough for a 9 year old hooked on GI-Joe.
So I gave the operator my ticket and sat alongside 8 other players. The guy in the clown suit gave some explanation about how the game worked, but all I heard was "shoot the clown in the face" and all of a sudden the bell had rung and water was being sprayed over the counter.
That's when I noticed that all the prizes were clown related; Ceramic clowns, rag-doll clowns, posters of clowns, clown bed lamps, clown towels, clown pens, and clown dart boards.
In the confusion I took aim, only I wasn't sure which clown I was supposed to be shooting so I just started spraying indiscriminantly. I sprayed every clown I could fix my sights on. I sprayed the dolls, the posters, the lamps, the towels...everything.
It was only a matter of seconds before the guy in the clown suit ran over (through several streams of water) to take the gun out of my hands. He yelled at me and told me not to come back.
I felt so bad that I threw away the remaining tickets and just walked around for a bit until it was time to meet my parents.