Hi Strathmore.

You remember that old song, that signalled the Oprah Winfrey show was starting. The kinda tropical one?

She played it, at the Saddledome in Calgary on Wednesday night. I know because I was there, within spitting distance of Oprah.

(OMG! AAAAAAAAAAHHHH!)

Ok I got the fan girl out of my system right there. I've decided that this blog is going to be about all of the funny things that happened at the event.

So I get to the Saddledome about 30 minutes early. I stop to get something quick to eat, and balancing my stuff, search through the concourse level only to realize you have to go upstairs, to get to the main floor level.

I am directionally challenged as it is.

I sit down in my seat, then they have Beyonce playing over the load speaker, and the women in font of me are up out of their seats dancing.

It was mostly women, by the way.

I thought, dang, Oprah hasn't even come out yet and they're already partying?

When she does come out, everyone is screaming and on their feet. Now you have to understand, I am the type of person that doesn't scream when I see celebrities.

I feel like they are just regular people, great to meet in my lifetime. But they are someone's brother, or sister right? They brush their teeth like we do every day.

So I watched with amusement as someone screamed that they loved her, and a 'hallelujah', and I looked into the faces of people who were crying.

I wondered to myself, 'this is a complete stranger,' Oprah I mean. We don't know her, and she doesn't know us.

But I have to say, the best was listening to her funny, sad, and downright horrible stories. All of them life lessons she was trying to pass down to us.

(Back to the funny parts).

So about an hour and a half had passed. By now it was about 9:30-ish. And we were sitting in these uncomfortable chairs. You couldn't stretch. The lady beside me to the left had stopped laughing

and was now pitched forward over her drink. I was staring into the bright white and yellow lights, thanking them for being so bright,  burning my eyeballs open.

A woman to my right in another row, after every sentence was grunting, "um hum."

And there was this uncomfortable laugh from someone in the bleachers every now and then. 

Not to mention the clappers. Those were the people who clapped for the sake of clapping, even when Oprah tried talking over them.

All together the talk was motivational. But I'm a people person, I like to watch people and gage their reactions. 

It seemed like most people learned something from the talk. I heard lots of people talking about changing the course of their lives as they left the building.

As I got outside I laughed when I finally got to my car. Of course there were thousands of people in the Saddledome, and everyone of them was trying to leave the lot all at once.

I sat in my car, drinking a juice box, waiting for the sea of red tail lights to clear, as people honked each other because they didn't move their cars two inches in the queue. 

I carefully put away by Oprah bookmark when I got home, and as I got ready to sleep at about 12:30 p.m. after watching CNN, I thought of all of the people that asked me to 

snap photos for them using their cell phones. 

I thought about the amazement on their faces, and the impact that Oprah Winfrey has had on the lives of others, by just being alive. 

Thanks,

 

Monique