joking

so, this past week I attended the state book awards ceremony, an affair much like a wedding with prizes. anyway, one of the winners of such a prize, the winner of the nonfiction award (I think), read from her new award winning book. she read a passage about finding oneself or finding one's vocation, and in this passage she wrote about a teacher who taught her about rocks. this teacher said of one particular rock, "this one should be in a pageant." I loved it. it was the only thing I loved in the award winning passage. this woman talking about a rock as if it were a beauty queen. the audience laughed. she mocked the woman. the audience laughed. she mitigated her mockery with a comment about how at least she had passion. the audience laughed. I didn't laugh. I loved her. and I wondered why all this laughing, why affirm the obvious which is that rocks do not hold beauty pageants? I don't know. but I knew I couldn't laugh without turning something inside out. so I didn't. that's all.