I fancy myself many things. I believe I have a moderate
degree of intelligence. I keep myself in decent shape. I'll never win (or run)
a marathon but I'm not going to keel over after running for six minutes. I think
I am **gasp** a perfectly average looking man. You know, not too ugly or
anything. Believe it or not, I even believe that I might be a little good at
this writing thing. At least that's what people tell me. In addition to all of these things, I consider
myself to be an expert people watcher. If you're not familiar with the term, it
is the act of spending time idly observing people in a public place (Thanks
Google!). If I'm trying to figure out a great public place to people watch, then one of the best I can think of is the zoo!
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| No, not Mizzou, THE ZOO! |
If you haven't picked up on where I'm heading with this yet,
first of all, shame on you. Second of all, Ellie and I decided to take
advantage of the nice weather (and an otherwise empty day) to head to the
Kansas City Zoo. I'd actually been promising to take Ellie to the zoo for quite
a while now but it kept falling through due to weather or other circumstances. Even though Ellie likely didn't
realize I had promised her, I still felt bad about not following through.
Therefore, after Ellie finished her lunch today, I loaded her up in the car to
head to the zoo.
As we approached Swope Park, I felt the anticipation growing
deep within my stomach. You see, I absolutely love the zoo. Animals are kind of
a passion for me. It's really a shame that I got a 'D' in biology in college
or maybe I could be working at a zoo right now. At least I can partly blame
that grade on the concussion I received shortly the night before one of the
biggest tests in that class. That knowledge helps slightly.
As we pulled into the zoo, I glanced in the rearview mirror
and was dismayed to find Ellie asleep in her car seat. I've always
heard to let sleeping babies lie and had every intention of following through
with that lesson. So there I sat in the front seat, logged on to the zoo's free
wifi, tweeting/facebooking my lack of patience for my daughter's nap schedule
to the world. Finally after 45 minutes, Ellie began to stir briefly. Taking
this as my opening, I rolled up the windows, grabbed her stroller out of the
cargo bay, and pulled my still-yawning baby from her car seat to head inside
for some quality zoo time.
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| I'm so close to getting in the zoo... |
The one negative of such a warm day at the zoo is that the
animals are pretty much all lethargic. Truth be told, a lethargic orangutan
barely holds my attention so why should I expect it to hold Ellie's. With that
being the case, I found myself briefly more interested in paying attention to those
around me. For example, the husband and wife who were rooting for the Yankees
and Royals specifically. I mean, that's basically the same thing as a union
between a Cowboys and Chiefs fan. I believe that those two crazy kids can make it work though. I mean, I Believe In A Thing Called Love after all.
As we meandered on through the zoo, Ellie and I reached the
camels who were one of the few outdoor animals being active. Taking Ellie out
of her stroller, I thrust her on top of my shoulders, allowing her to see the
camels from a better vantage point. Under normal circumstances, I will talk to
Ellie about what she's seeing. At the time though, there was a foursome coming
down the walkway so I held my tongue. Imagine my surprise when one guy out of
the group stops not five feet away from us and begins yelling at the camel in
what I can only assume was some form of Arabic. Finally one of his friends said
a sentence I'll never forget. "Muhammed,
you idiot! That's an American camel. He only speaks American." With that, Muhammed, with frustration etched across his face, hurried to catch up
with his friends, puffing on his raspberry (or cherry) Vape pen all the way.
When I regaled my wife with this tale, she described it as
the greatest story she'd ever heard. I think that's mildly overselling it but
it is pretty good compared to the other stories from the day of Ellie relentlessly
trying to touch a chimpanzee's butt through glass or the one where I lost one
of her socks and found said sock sitting in a pile of leaves next to the
Sky-Tram. See, those stories wouldn't have been that interesting at all.
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| For Ellie's sake, I don't want to admit how long she stared at this chimp's rear end... |
At least I don't think they would have been. What do I know
anyway? I'm just a people-watcher. #DaddyWrite
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