Zoo Stories

Originally posted in late July or early August of 2008.

My Mom has a lot of wonderful stories, but her story telling technique is just the opposite of my Dad's. She goes strait to the point, and the story (while extremely interesting or funny) is over before you realize it. Because of that, many of her stories don't translate very well to paper. While most members of my family tell stories that take pages to write, Mom has a unique ability to get to the punch line in less than a hundred words.

The following are four stories that my Mom tells about taking us to the St. Louis Zoo when we were little. This first story takes place around 1987.

I took Erin and Michael to the Zoo, and Michael was probably about two years old, and we were looking at all the animals, and I said, "Look, Michael, A Penguin," and he says, "No, Mommy, a black and white one."

It was so real, though. I mean, I thought it was odd that he would even notice the color. A pink one... "No, Mommy, a black and white one."

Within the St. Louis Zoo, there is a small petting zoo, known as The Children's Zoo. There are several different domestic birds and mammals that children can interact with, including several pygmy mountain goats that hop on and off of rocks and ledges. This story takes place in that vary area of the zoo, in about 1984.

We were in the Children's Zoo, and I had Erin in the stroller, and she had been eating crackers all morning. And we went down, her Dad and I, and Erin went into where the goats were walking around. And Erin wanted to see them better, because she was real excited about them jumping up on the walls, so her Daddy took her out of the stroller and showing her the goats, and I was standing with the empty stroller. And a little boy came up to me, and a goat was eating crackers out of the seat of the stroller that Erin left behind, and the little boy said, "Lady! Lady! I think the goat ate your baby!"

At this point, in the storytelling, that my Mom had warmed up a bit to the idea and was no longer worrying about being recorded, which is why her stories switched from third to first person. She was now directing them to me directly. It's a strange feeling to be a character in a story, when you have no memory of the events.

Also, as the stories switched gears, my Dad went from being "Erin's Dad," to simply "Dad." I couldn't help but notice that both of my parents do this when telling me stories that involve family members. Even in stories where my Dad and his brothers are children, they will always be referred to as "Uncle Jim" and "Uncle Dave."

Enough digressing; the following two stories are about me... as told by my Mom... to me.

We were walking around the zoo. You were probably about in Kindergarten, I want to say. And we walked passed the kangaroos, and we're watching the kangaroos, and you see this tiny little bubble about the size of a pea on the grass. And we had no idea where the bubble came from or why it was there, but it was a real pretty little bubble with all different colors. And you picked it up on a leaf and carried it around all day long until it finally popped. We can't even... we didn't even know what the bubble was.

It was amazing that, with all the things to look at, you noticed a tiny little bubble on a leaf.

The family mentioned in this next story is the French family. Brenda has been my Mom's friend since they were a year old. She and her husband, Mike, have four children: Nicole and Michele, who are several years older than me, and Matt and Nathan, who are younger than both my brother and I. The Frenches are frequently focal characters in stories told by my Mom.

Brenda and Mike, and Michele and Nicole, and Dad and I, and you went to the zoo. And you had done this thing with your neck where you stretched your neck out, and you put your eyes up real big, and you'd stick out your tongue like you were licking something, and that was your giraffe imitation. And it was real funny, and so Dad and I kept having you show everybody your giraffe imitation. And Mike French hadn't seen it, so we says, "Show Mike your giraffe imitation." And you stretched out your neck, and you opened your eyes, and you stuck out your tongue, and you went over to the nearest tree and started licking it. Mike French about fell on the ground laughing.