I am through with chemistry. It was such a positive experience. I really enjoyed it and realized how much I have always loved math and science. It is kind of my comfort zone. I think I would be in a lot less turmoil all of the time if I was studying at that end of campus. Part of the reason for going to college was to step out of my comfort zone though, so I guess I am where I need to be to grow, but…
For my BFA project I am working with my friend Stephonn and we are doing a show that is being called a cabaret. It is in actuality more of a one man, one woman show about our creative lives. I guess the second half is more cabaret like. Where most BFA students step into a part that has been written by an established playwright, with a faculty director, costumes designed by our costume shop and a set built in the shop, we will be writing our own show and scrounging for costumes. Sets, etc will be minimal or non-existent. I am not very sure about all of this, but I am plugging right along with the process.
In meeting with Stephonn this week, we talked about all sorts of aspects of the show, our fears, our desires, our expectations. One of the things Stephonn asked from me was to add a song or something about the fact that I grew up in the zoo. I told him I didn’t want to, but I would think about it and I have.
I think a lot of you already know this, but for those who don’t – I grew up in the zoo. Many times when I tell someone that for the first time I hear a chuckle with a remark like, “Yeah, I know what you mean! Our house was crazy, too.” or ” Oh, we had three cats AND a dog!” It usually takes me a minute to make them understand that I actually grew up in the zoo. My dad was the director and my house was smack dab in the middle of the zoo grounds. I had no neighborhood friends, no neighborhood. My “friends” were the employees of the zoo, but mostly I was just alone. It was not a “fairy tale” like some people think. I was not allowed to officially work there but every summer from age 10- 15 I hung out with the college girls they hired to work in the children’s zoo. I was the most conscientious non-employee ever. I was always on time and seldom took breaks. When the paid girls would sit in the shade and complain, I held guinea pigs for children to pet and held sticky hands of kids as the walked over the stairs between areas of the small petting zoo that used to be the high point of the old children’s zoo. I learned lots of facts about the animals and tried to teach the little kids as they came through. I can however, remember telling kids that the long haired guinea pigs were Moes and that was where mohair came from. (Not true, but I thought it was hilarious!)
Life in the zoo had lots of stories. I don’t think these stories fit into our show. I don’t even think about them as part of my life any more. After talking to Stephonn I had to examine why I don’t feel that a place I lived for 22 years has any bearing on my life story. I thought maybe I was being a butt for not pursuing that idea. I mean Stephonn asked me please, pretty please!
One story I have is that whenever we ate watermelon in the summer, we walked over to the hippopotamus pen and my dad would step in and call the hippos over. He would pat them on the cheeks and they would open those huge mouths and my dad would throw in a couple of rinds left from our snack. I didn’t even like watermelon but I ate it to get to this part of the evening. They would happily munch the rinds and juice would run down their chins and necks. They would moan as they ate and then after nudging my dad as a thank you, lumber away to lay down in the shade again. Great story but I don’t see it in our show- anyway, hasn’t Disney already done dancing hippos?
I could go on and on but won’t. And that is one reason not to put this in the show. This is another show or book someday- this is not the time or place. I also realized how long ago all of this was, it was another era. While college kids see where they grew up as their life, I am thirty years removed from this life. It was more than their lifetimes ago. It doesn’t feel like it was even a part of my life anymore. Most of these kids still live in their childhood home, at least they still go home to their parents for holidays and summer breaks. I do not. I have owned several homes of my own in thirty years! So it is not the same for me as it is for them.
But finally I realized the main reason I have put all of that out of my mind for now. It was not my life. It was my father’s. He always made it clear that the zoo was his domain and he kept us away from it as much as possible. He frowned on my work in the children’s zoo, but let that go because I was so bored in the summer with no friends to play with. He discouraged my friendships with the keepers, mostly men, and he squashed my curiosity about the business of running a zoo. Maybe he knew what was coming.
After the city employees became unionized I was forbidden to go down to hang out in the zoo. Instead of the family atmosphere the employees had, suddenly it was a war. Once during a strike our car was showered with rocks as we drove to our house. My mom, dad and I had to feed every animal in the entire zoo by ourselves as the keepers picketed outside. I worked until time to go to school and then came home to finish up. It gave a whole new meaning to having chores! It was exhausting and nearly impossible! We were so exhausted that we made small errors like getting too close to dangerous animals and being injured because of it. Luckily nothing serious, but scary none the less. And it went on for weeks. But the worst part of it was when the picketers found my cat, broke her neck and put her on the window sill just outside my bedroom window. After that I no longer had any feelings of friendship for these people. I didn’t know exactly who did it, but when I confronted one guy he laughed. And they were supposed to love and take care of these animals? They would leave them to starve and even kill one to get a few more dollars an hour? After all of that we went in and out the back gate and as far as I was concerned, the zoo was merely behind our house, not our back yard anymore.
So NO! I do not want to include this in the project. I am tapping into enough hurtful feelings. This is too hard to explain. NO ONE really understands and I can’t make them understand in a song or a skit. It is something I don’t really understand myself completely. I think the fact that we are taking on such a huge task for our project is enough without trying to make sense of that part of my life in the zoo.
