Rulon Gardner at Trolley Square

Salt Lake City is where I spent a few days recently. While there, I kept a journal of thoughts and writings, just a random collection of the life going on around me. Sometimes I analyzed life as I wrote. The collection included short stories I was told, bits and pieces of conversation overheard in the hotel lobbies and my own feelings and observations, recorded sequentially in a spiral notebook. Several times the question was asked if I was writing a book, perhaps because of the furious scribbling. There was no goal in mind, just a few days and some time to record life.

Reviewing the handwritten notes later, I was surprised at the thoughts recorded one evening. I became aware again that all of us take the life around us and somehow assimilate it into our existence, our conscious or subconscious, and then we go on. The “going on” part is easier to do when life isn’t hitting close to home, obviously, because I was able to eat cotton candy at Trolley Square.

That evening I recorded:
Trolley Square, a small mall. I find the Trolley Taffy Station. Here I spy a collection of laminated news articles from the February 12, 2007 shootings at this mall. I pick one victim and read, Teresa Ellis. I stop to analyze, wonder why I picked that one from all the names listed, then, it becomes obvious. My 2nd son is named Ellis. So obvious but it was a subconscious choice. Cotton Candy is $1.75 a bag. Cold water is $1 a bottle. I decide to buy, mostly because of the display of articles. I debate. Pink? Purple? Blue? Yellow? White? Mixed? I go with the pink, isn’t cotton candy supposed to be pink? When I pay, I ask if the display is the only one in Trolley Square. The girl behind the counter looks puzzled. I point to the articles only inches away. “I think so,” she replies. I tell her thanks. I mean for the cotton candy and the articles.

I step back to take a picture. Flash. A whisper behind the counter, one girl to another, “Did she take a picture?” I ask, “Is it ok?” The reply comes, “Sure.” Flash. I take another. I buy pink cotton candy just 8 weeks after the fatal shootings. My husband and I watched all the night news coverage at home in Wyoming. Trolley Square was distant then.

Something catches my eye. Suddenly, I’m not sure if I took the picture solely because of the shooting articles or because of the Got Milk? ad of “Rulon Gardner, Dairy King”. I hadn’t noticed Rulon’s ad before now, consciously. The ad is signed, “To the best taffy in town.” He’s hanging, smiling, adjacent to the laminated articles describing the shootings. I’m glad he’s there, our Wyoming Olympic hero. The pink cotton candy bag in my hand is confusing to me, like Rulon hanging next to the shooting articles. They both seem out of place but they are both comforting.

I contemplate death while eating pink cotton candy.

Originally published as "Cotton Candy at Trolley Square" in my Love.Life.Politics column of the Kemmerer Gazette, 2007.