In A Van Down By The River

Today there was a huge traffic jam coming in to work - which is not usually the case. I typically get to work relatively easily considering we live in a pretty big town that likes to do construction on every major road all at the same time. Or maybe because I get in after the bulk of rush hour passes. That's probably it.

Anyway, I had no idea why there was sooo much traffic - and it was all getting off on downtown ramps. I heard on the radio that there was a "Motivational Seminar" down at the Scottrade Center. I immediately thought of Chris Farley's SNL skit:

You know, the one where the dad hires the "motivational speaker" to come and motivate his teenage kids to achieve more before they end up "living in a van down by the river." I chuckled to myself all the way to the office, thinking about all those people going to listen to a guy like Chris Farley's motivational speaker guy.

Then I found out that the speakers were Colin Powell, George Foreman, Zig Ziglar, Suze Orman, Steve Forbes, among others. Not so much "van down by the river" motivation. Pretty cool, actually.

It was about 9:00 am when all this was happening and the motivational seminar started at 8:00 am. I find that funny (and sort of ironic) that people who wanted to attend a motivational seminar were running late. A lot of them. Lots and lots of latecomers. A judge I know used to tell truant teenagers that 80% of life is just showing up and if they'd just show up at school, something might rub off.

Hopefully everyone was appropriately motivated and next time, they won't be late - or they might end up living in a van down by the river.