A Convention of Clowns. Really
I came to St. Louis yesterday afternoon and stopped by my hotel to get check in and eat lunch before heading off to a meeting with members of the Meramec English Department. I was a bit tired, a little groggy, and encumbered of the usual stress that comes from being in airport, where every one is a suspected terrorist and treated accordingly so.

I trudged off the shuttle, but as I made way to the registration desk, I was passed by a clown. A real clown, with baggy clown, a red clown nose, purple fuzzy clown hair and with an oversized clown flower in her oversized clown jacket. And coming towards me, from the opposite directions, were two more clowns, chatting, checking the time. And to my left, seated in the lobby couches, hunched over a something I could see, but conversing away like three business executives planning a presentation, were yet more clowns.

And they all had badges. I'd stumbled into a clown convention.

And just the site it of it all, with the juxtaposition of so much color and clown clothes on people who were being, well, so convention-like, rather than clown like, was better than a seeing a clown in performance mode. It was wonderfully funny.

And so I felt better, just by the sight of it all.