A Festival and a Dispenser of Shields

First of all, the Utah Arts Festival:

Cool art. Cool music, if you don't count the atrocious honky-tonk country and the tacky rock band on the Amphitheatre Stage. (Why does the Intermountain West insist on country music? Why? Is it some sort of throwback to our frontier roots? We are living in the twenty-first century, people! Not everyone's a cowboy!) Among the other festival attractions were lot's of overpriced food and watered-down cups of lemonade, and LOTS of beer. You could get drunk off the fumes. In fact, I almost did. With my weight and drinking experience (none, on both accounts) I don't hold my liquor so well. But when all was said and done, the best thing of all was the Brazilian dance group, which we could just see if we looked through tiny cracks in-between people's bodies, the crowd was so thick. With a little perseverance, I was able to get a prime spot precariously perched atop a wall where I could see basically everything if I craned my head over the person in front of me. But before getting on to the coveted wall, I had the honor of getting beer spilled all over the back of my legs. "Oh man. I am so sorry about that," says the culprit. Sure you are. Sorry you just dropped your five buck dixie-cup of Bud Light! Luckily, alcohol evaporates quickly. I guess that's why they use it to clean things, and that, in my opinion, is the only thing it should be used for, and NOT to enebriate otherwise sane people. The art really was cool, though, all other things aside. So was the dance.

#2 Shield dispenser
If you are Bryce, or as squeamish as, you may want to skip this part. So, we are all familiar with maxi-pad dispensers in women's restrooms. You put in a quarter, twist the nob, and bingo: you are spared embarrassment in an emergency. The restrooms in the Church Office Building, like any other respectable, accredited establishment, provide these little vending machines, but (and this is a big but) with an added component which I happened to note while drying my hands with a paper towel. I glanced over at the little white box and couldn't help but notice that you could not only buy a pad or a tampon (ten cents each), but also a "shield". Now, let us consider the context of this discovery. I was in the Church Office Building, which is, as you know, kinda like the temple. Or at least close by. Could it be that the Church Office Building Tampax vending machines dispensed some sort of big, billowy shield?. Was that really necessary? I sneer at myself even as I write this. Of course not. Of course it meant that for ten cents you could buy...the Shield of Faith! (But where, then, were the white boxes selling Breastplates of Righteousness?) Obviously, my own logic wasn't getting me anywhere. I called Christina into the bathroom. "What is this? What kind of shield are we dispensing here?" I asked, pointing to the box. She caught my eye and we succumbed to what is commonly referred to as "the giggles." "Do you have a dime?" She asked. I did. I put it in and turned the nob. I braced myself to catch the enormous, cast-iron shield that was sure to come tumbling out of the small white vending machine...but was greeted instead by a small, pink box. We poured over the writing on the box trying to distinquish what hidden treasure, indeed, what shield it contained therein.... It was a dumb panty-liner! Oh, the irony. Disappointed, we finally left the restroom, armed if not by the Shield of Faith then at least--you know--for some other kind of emergency.