robglazebrook.com

As Justin and I were lazily flipping through channels Saturday night, we happened upon what I believe to be the most surreal scene I’ve yet encountered. Admittedly, I’m only 23 and hopefully have many years left in which to best myself, but still. This was freaky.

Initial scene: A group of brightly-dressed clowns in what appears to be a third-world children’s hospital. The clowns are playing with the children, who are laughing and enjoying themselves.

Cut to scene: A young girl, probably around seven years old, lies screaming on an operating table. Her body has been horribly burned to the point that her flesh in many places is unrecognizably charred. Her mother stands off to the side, sobbing. While the doctor examines her back, which seems to have taken the brunt of the damage, a clown tries to distract the girl with antics. As the doctor begins cutting charred chunks of flesh from her body, inducing screams of an entirely new decibel from the girl, the clown holds the child’s arms to keep her from fighting off the doctor while simultaneously trying to get the girl to laugh. Another clown wanders into the room playing a somber tune on a violin.

Justin and I were transfixed for a good ten minutes, stuck somewhere between sympathy, revulsion, compassion, and a desire to laugh at the seemingly impossible scene. Once the girl was bandaged and taken home by her mother, we changed the channel and watched a good fifteen minutes of the home shopping network. We needed a touchstone of normalcy. :)

After a bit of online searching, I’m guessing he and I caught a portion of an Italian movie/documentary called Clown in Kabul. How we stumbled upon this, or why it was playing at 12:30am on a Sunday morning, I don’t know. But I think it may have numbed my surreality sensors for a bit.