Yesterday was national jelly bean day and to celebrate, my family and I went to the "Super Colon", which is currently on display in the Providence Auditorium in downtown Spokane.

The ad in the paper described the colon:
"Standing 8-feet tall, the Super Colon is an incredible, inflatable, interactive colon that teaches people not only about the risks and symptoms of colorectal cancer, but that it is preventable, treatable and beatable!"
Not to mention that it is fodder for a great number of sphincter, rectum, and poo jokes.
We were completely sold on the event and ran pell-mell for the exhibit, only stopping for a moment to see if our combined weight would activate the gate in the parking lot...



...and to panic over a mysteriously vacant case for a fire extinguisher.



The picture the web site gives of the colon fails to show the right side of the colon which I assumed stretched on in long and amusing wiggles and loops. But, when we finally arrived we were surprised to find that the "Super Colon" was a actually closer to a rather anti-climactic semicircle that smelled like an old tarp. Not to be discouraged we gathered as many freebie do-it-yourself feces testers, colon cancer prevention bracelets and complimentary notepads as we could carry, pulled on our surgical gloves, and headed in.



As you walked through the corridor o' colon you could see odd bumps, worm-like protuberances, and several dark discoloration's with little signs beneath them to tell us about what kind of colon issue we were observing.




We all waked through once or twice, tried posing for a family photo and then (seeing as we were next to the only ones there) I enjoyed running several laps around and through the colin; grinning and poking at all the lovely inflatable diseases, wondering if my speeds through the colon reflected different varieties of poo, and basking in the wonders of something that is gigantic, inflatable and simultaneously a colon.

Eventually we had to leave. The goodness is that the Super Colon is on tour to almost 60 sites nation wide, and may soon be in a town near you!