Painted sky-blue with a bright red staircase at the far end, the ugly bus is too boxy, too oversized for proper use as a smoothie stand. Unlikely umbrellas sprouting out the top, like oversized inverted T.V. satellite dishes, add to the comic effect.
Instead, smoothie stands should be cute, accessible and inviting, not bulky, cold and intimidating. Shouldn’t they?
Recently, I witnessed another incongruous event—a television interview with famed Canadian actor, Donald Sutherland, who is now 82. He is the veteran of over 150 film roles, although he confesses to have never viewed many of those films.
I assumed Sutherland to be self-assured, a man of confidence. Instead, he was surprisingly uncertain and full of comic introspection.
He is especially put off by his own physical appearance. As a young boy, he asked his mother if he were good looking. Avoiding a direct response to his query, and after a long pause, she answered, “Your face has character, Donald.” He escaped to his room to hide.
“It’s not easy to know that you’re an ugly man,” he reflected in the interview.
To be beautiful, to be handsome seems to be what it’s all about. But common sense tells us that looks aren’t everything. Consider King Saul, the most handsome of men, but a royal disaster.
In fact, all of us have bits out of place. It’s those out-of-place, incongruent bits that make us who we are–the knobby nose, the unequal ears, the scrubby brows.
Many of us, like Donald Sutherland, have misgivings about ourselves. Like the oversized sky-blue smoothie bus with red staircase, we feel ugly as a giant smoothie stand.
Yet, it’s that same sky-blue and red paint and odd umbrellas that make the smoothie stand so memorable, unexpected and delightful; there’s an incongruent party going on.
Without those peculiar ears, chin and eyes, we’d miss Donald Sutherland. He just wouldn’t be the same.
And without our own slightly whacky, slightly unexpected but thoroughly engaging bits, neither would we.