Creepy

I like this photo, and I like it for its "slightly off" atmosphere; it's an unsettling effect. I created it, first, by taking it in a cemetary (natch), but also by tinting the photo, sharpening the tomb with the cross, and slightly blurring the rest of the photo. So I hate to ruin the effect of it with this silly story, but the connection between the photo and the story is this: creepiness.

At my wife's teacher faculty meeting, one of her colleagues conveyed this story to the group: a student worker rushed up to her in a state of alarm and said, "There's a man with a beard wearing shorts walking down the hall! Doesn't....doesn't look right!" To which my wife's colleague replied to the student worker, "Oh, that's just Dr. B." Apparently all the staff laughed the laugh that comes from easy recognition--hopefully recognition of knowing me, that is, and not recognition of the "...doesn't look right part." But I'll never know. (But I do! And it hurts.)

What happened was this. I biked to my wife's school, which is about 4.5 miles away from my office. I had worked up a sweat, I suppose, and probably I looked flushed or who knows what.

I blame my creepy look on the bike ride. (Okay, mostly I blame it on the student worker who couldn't tell the difference between strikingly distinguished and creepy.) My wife blames it on the beard, about which she told the group, apparently, that she's asked me to shave it a million times.

Anything for a laugh, I guess, including lies and slanders. Harrumph!