No lie.
So when I was about thirteen, I went to visit my father in California. He asked if I wanted to do anything special in California while I was there, and I hesitantly asked about Disneyland.
“Well, it’s pretty expensive,” he said. “Anything else?”
“Seaworld?” I tried.
“That we can do,” he said, and so we went.
I was an awkward new teen, self-conscious and full of anxiety and hopes and dreams. I desperately wanted to have a Mystical Dolphin Experience, and California/Seaworld seemed a likely place to have something like that happen. I was actually more excited about going there than to Disneyland.
Off to Seaworld we went, my father, my stepmom, my grandmother, and me. We saw sealions and seals and killer whales and sharks and fish. Partway through our tour, we came upon an open dolphin tank with about four or five dolphins swimming around. A stand nearby listed prices for handfuls of fish.
My heart leapt. A dolphin feeding tank! My Mystical Dolphin Experience could very well be at hand!
My father went over to the stand to buy some fish. I didn’t even have to ask. My thirteen-year-old face must have lit up like a lamp when I saw the tank.
In just a moment, he came back shaking his head. Around the front of the stand was a big sign that read “CLOSED.” There were three times listed that the stand would be open. The last time had just passed maybe fifteen minutes earlier, and the next time wasn’t until well after supper. We planned to be long gone by then, and even I knew we weren’t going to hang around that late just to feed a couple dolphins some fish. My heart crashed.
The dolphins seemed to be happily interacting with a couple of people, even without fish, so we went to the edge of the tank to see if they would maybe come say hi. I stuck my hands in the water and splashed gently, hoping to attract their attention.
It quickly became clear what was going on. One man, who had a lot of dolphin attention, had a big ZZ Top beard that he was draping into the water, and the dolphins were taking turns rubbing against it and chattering at him. Another man, who was also amusing the dolphins, had an automatic camera (it was 1989, they were very cool), and every time he took a picture and the camera wound the film, the dolphins got all excited and mimicked the sound.
None of them even glanced at the skinny girl at the side of the tank, gently splashing the water and maybe crying a little inside.
After several minutes, my father shook his head. “They’re too busy over there,” he said. “Let’s keep going.”
I knew he was right. So with a heavy heart, and pretty sure I’d never see dolphins so close again, I followed my family away from the tank.
My father and stepmother were scuba divers, and they enjoyed diving the reefs. There was a reef fish display they wanted to see, and I was far more interested in sea mammals than fish, so they told me to go on ahead to the penguin exhibit and they would meet me there after they looked at the reef fish. So I went on by myself.
The penguin exhibit was a big building, air conditioned to keep the penguins happy. A big moat surrounded the outside of the building, ringed by a low wall, and several penguins who didn’t mind the California weather were hanging out on islands in the moat. There was no one else hanging around but me.
I walked over to the wall to look at the penguins.
They instantly looked back at me. All ten of them, their little beaks like compass needles pointing at me.
I laid down on the wall and cautiously reached my fingers down to the moat. I had never heard that penguins were especially friendly, so I had no idea what would happen. I wasn’t expecting much.
The instant my fingers touched the water, all ten penguins jumped off the island. They swam right for me. Have you ever seen penguins swim? The fly in the water. They are fast and graceful, and they swim nose-to-tail in formation.
Again, I wasn’t sure what might happen, but figured if the penguins were aggressive or bitey, they wouldn’t be so easy for people to reach. I also thought that they might be expecting food, and I didn’t have any, so they might leave as soon as they figured that out. I left my fingers in the water and waited to see what they would do.
They swam over and surfaced just enough to rub against my fingers, one after the other. Then they swam to the other end of the moat, where they U-turned and came back. Emboldened, I stuck my hand further in the water and spread my fingers. The penguins wriggled under my fingers, nuzzling me with their heads as they went by, rolling so I would rub their tummies, lifting wings so I could rub their armpits — wingpits? Then they U-turned at the other end of the moat and came back again.
Penguins are soft. They feel like those stuffed animals that are super light and fluffy. They were extremely pleasant to pet.
They U-turned and came back, U-turned and came back, U-turned and came back. I stuck both hands in the water to pet them better. Not once did any of them even make a motion to nip at me. They rolled under my fingers, lining up so all of them could have a turn, then swung back for more.
I think I stayed there petting the penguins for twenty minutes. Half an hour. Something like that. Then my family came up behind me, done with the reef fish and ready to see the penguin house.
“Look!” I said.
They looked. They pet the penguins too. The penguins seemed to enjoy every second of the attention.
When I got up off the wall, the penguins all hopped out of the water and watched me leave. I waved at them. They were penguins, so they just watched me go.
But my little thirteen-year-old heart was full.
And that is where I learned that just because someone is loud and acts like a big deal doesn’t mean they’re actually cool. Sometimes it’s the folks who aren’t making a fuss who are the best. And that if you let an experience just be what it is with no expectations, it will probably wind up being even better than you thought.
