Sometimes I try to imagine what my parents must have thought about everything they had to put up with. Especially when I remember -- and get a chance to regale some sweet-hearted, fairy-princess-loving little girl with -- this tale. And I swear every word of it is, to my best ability, true.
The story of this day ends with a fairy princess alright, but it starts with a baboon. The kind with the bright red behind that is just too much for some kids to take -- a primate who would have had a very hard time of it in grade school, let’s just say.
Well, I’d hopped in the car for a very special, unexpected, get-out-of-school, go-out-with-Mom-and-her-best-friend trip to the ZOO.
Yay!
Of course, I wound up at the dentist. Curses, foiled again.
And what a trip it was. Apparently I was a bad little brusher, as the dentist and his minion came at me with that smelly mask and -- continuing our developing theme -- knocked me out cold.
Ha. That’s what they thought.
Alone, I wandered in a technicolor nightmare, walking amid weird horizontal lines like an old television on the fritz. Lost, terrified, trying to think what to do. Finally, the only answer came.
I took a big breath and screamed with everything I had.
Cleared the waiting room, they said.
That was nothing compared to what I dished out to the “big liar,” my mom, once I escaped. Don’t know if they really had planned on a zoo outing after all that, but boy, we went.
How anyone touring a 1960s zoo -- and seeing what passed for “creature comforts” back then -- could have stayed in a funk of self-pity, I now wonder.
Then I saw, sitting inside the bars of a sorry cement pen, a baboon, who clearly had more to complain about than I. I had run ahead, and so the baboon and I were alone. We regarded each other awhile, and then somehow he (or she, I never knew) let me know we could play. I’d do something silly and she (or he) would copy me. Wiggly, waving little girl hands, wiggly, waving baboon hands. Jumping little girl, jumping baboon. Astounding! Joy! Connection. Heart.
Sudden, completely new understanding of a fellow creature, and through him or her, all of them, all of us. If my mother hadn’t finally dragged me away I never would have left that baboon, my new friend, on my own.
As you likely know, when you pay attention, animals show you how deep your heart is, how deep love goes, until you realize it’s bottomless.
The story of this day ends with a fairy princess alright, but it starts with a baboon. The kind with the bright red behind that is just too much for some kids to take -- a primate who would have had a very hard time of it in grade school, let’s just say.
Well, I’d hopped in the car for a very special, unexpected, get-out-of-school, go-out-with-Mom-and-her-best-friend trip to the ZOO.
Yay!
Of course, I wound up at the dentist. Curses, foiled again.
And what a trip it was. Apparently I was a bad little brusher, as the dentist and his minion came at me with that smelly mask and -- continuing our developing theme -- knocked me out cold.
Ha. That’s what they thought.
Alone, I wandered in a technicolor nightmare, walking amid weird horizontal lines like an old television on the fritz. Lost, terrified, trying to think what to do. Finally, the only answer came.
I took a big breath and screamed with everything I had.
Cleared the waiting room, they said.
That was nothing compared to what I dished out to the “big liar,” my mom, once I escaped. Don’t know if they really had planned on a zoo outing after all that, but boy, we went.
How anyone touring a 1960s zoo -- and seeing what passed for “creature comforts” back then -- could have stayed in a funk of self-pity, I now wonder.
Then I saw, sitting inside the bars of a sorry cement pen, a baboon, who clearly had more to complain about than I. I had run ahead, and so the baboon and I were alone. We regarded each other awhile, and then somehow he (or she, I never knew) let me know we could play. I’d do something silly and she (or he) would copy me. Wiggly, waving little girl hands, wiggly, waving baboon hands. Jumping little girl, jumping baboon. Astounding! Joy! Connection. Heart.
Sudden, completely new understanding of a fellow creature, and through him or her, all of them, all of us. If my mother hadn’t finally dragged me away I never would have left that baboon, my new friend, on my own.
As you likely know, when you pay attention, animals show you how deep your heart is, how deep love goes, until you realize it’s bottomless.
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