By: Wild One

Let me start by saying I’m not good at relationships. Not one bit. That’s because I don’t want to change for someone. And I guess I can find the drama someplace else. Like when I take my family to the zoo.

I decided to take my nephews to the zoo for a Halloween event.

What I didn’t realize was everyone else in town decided to do the same thing.

First, there is no arrow on the traffic light to get into the parking lot which is on a major busy street. While sitting in the turn lane for the fifth straight red light, my brother-in-law called to tell me to not even try to park at the zoo. “Go towards the baseball field and try there.”

That was the first sign this trip might not be a good idea. I have my 80-year-old grandmother and my aunt with back problems along with me and now we are going to have to hike to the zoo.

When we reached the zoo there are three incredibly long lines. One is for members, one for people who just signed up to become a member, and one for everyone else. Well, my sister is a member, but the rest of us are not. Yes that put us in the longest line there. After talking to some people standing in line with us, we found out my sister could buy all our tickets with her membership. Cool, that sent us to a shorter line. But we all had to dig up cash to pay for the tickets.

After getting our tickets and getting into the zoo, we found ourselves yet in another line. You won’t believe this but the three lines outside were all merging into one line inside the zoo. It bottlenecked just like a freeway interchange with just as many rude and inconsiderate people.

The zoo had made a special path and its sponsors and staff had decorated and themed it along the way. Candy Land, pirates, Harry Potter, super heroes, Alice in Wonderland, tropical islands, etc. I was very impressed with this.

But the people did not impress me. Don’t people teach their kids manners these days? My nephews are ages two and three. We saw a 12-year-old trying to forge a way to the candy and running over the little kids in the process. Even worse, their parents were doing just as much pushing.

My brother-in-law went ahead of us and when he saw which side of the sidewalk the next setup was on he would yell back to stay to the right or left. There would be no merging into other lanes on this freeway at the last minute.

Just past half way the path, things thinned out. I don’t know what happened to the rest of the people. Hopefully the polar bear ate them.

The good news is that I was able to take pictures of my family with the characters. One of my nephews is obsessed with superheroes but he was afraid of Batman. Still, he had no problem running up to the Geico Gecko and getting a picture. My brother-in-law went nuts when he saw the Ghost Busters at the end of the path and insisted he needed his picture taken with them.

The even better news is that I was able to get some really good decoration ideas for the upcoming years. I’m gonna go crazy with creativity!

See?? With all this drama just in one simple trip to the zoo, who needs a relationship?