For one thing, I go from the sub-suburbs to the middle of downtown.
And it is an education to see who’s who in all the areas in between. There is a sort of core sample of humanity parading by. It’s fascinating to behold. There are some semi-street performers that are fun to watch. I call them semi, because they do not have a hat out for donations, as I would think the serious street performer would. They are just free lance hyper extroverts out doing their thing on the sidewalks.
I saw one handsome, tall man with headphones on singing at the top of his lungs to whatever music he was listening to. . .(I did not recognize the song). But he was doing some smooth ballroom like slides and dance steps, with dramatic pauses for emphasis. He twirled around with his palm on his stomach with an almost Fred Astair like grace that was really something, but then he sort of ruined it by doubling over like James Brown with a tortured look on his face. Last I saw him he was careening off down the block all by himself with his hands raised in the air, doing a modified pirouette. (Look at that, I can spell pirouette, but I still don’t know how to spell excersize. . .)
There was one woman who got on the train and very briefly sat down with three of us ladies and conspiratorially said something unintelligible and then moved two seats down, and from then on talked to herself.
I saw another man walking down the street, and it looked like he was limping, but as I watched longer, I saw that he was singing to himself and doing a kind of rhythmic dance step. Actually, come to think of it, there is a lot of singing and dancing going on downtown. If I didn’t know better I would think that the Music Man was visiting. . . T R O U B L E, right here in River City.
So tomorrow is the big day. They don’t really know exactly how many will come to the exposition, but there could be as many as 8,000. I don’t have a place in my brain for dealing with that number of people. Good thing they only come one at a time…. I hope….. ! My one consolation is my co-worker E. will be there. A cheerful soul if I ever met one. Between the two of us, I think we will survive.