Vacation Day Three: "Wal-ligators?"

You do things on vacation that you would never do sitting at home. That's what vacations are all about, in my mind: getting out and seeing the world and trying new things. I love to do that, even when the world I'm seeing is mostly t-shirt shops and the World's Largest Orange, and the "new things" I'm trying are very very bony alligator ribs.

Friday, Day Three of our vacation, promised all sorts of new things. Or at least, a lot of one new thing: Gators. Despite our best efforts, we had not yet seen an actual alligator in Florida -- this despite the fact that I had walked by the lake at the time share several times, and we'd taken the Babies! past the lake at least once, and we'd also driven around a lot and been to Wal-Mart several times. (I expected, at a Super Wal-Mart, that they'd at least have the Wal-Mart version of alligators, like they have the Wal-Mart version of everything else. "Wal-ligators." But no luck.)

Florida has a fix for that: Gatorland. Gatorland, according to its brochures and billboards and websites, is the "Alligator Capital of the World." If they did not have enough gators to keep us satisfied, nothing would.

So we got an early start -- leaving about 10 a.m., after all the slathering of goo -- and headed off to Gatorland.

Driving through Central Florida is boring. I've driven through Kansas and Oklahoma and Arizona and even Ohio and Indiana, and Central Florida ranks up there with all of those states in terms of boringosity and run-down-ishness. Get off of International Drive and the Kissimmee drive area is not very scenic at all. It's mostly flat and trees and telephone wires, and the continued overabundance of combination shops. I found myself wondering, as I do whenever I'm in a tourist spot, whether ordinary people live there and if so, what are their lives like?

Think of that the next time you visit Orlando, or the Wisconsin Dells, or anyplace that claims to be the World Capital of anything that involves animals, waterslides or roller-coasters: how do the ordinary people there live? Do they wear moccasins and eat fudge year 'round? Do they communicate solely via postcard? Somewhere in Orlando, there has to be banks and law offices and title companies and regular grocery stores that don't also offer to buy your extra Disney tickets or take you on a scenic helicopter ride, doesn't there? At the Super Wal-Mart in Kissimmee, a store I was getting ever more familiar with, they sold, alongside all the other Wal-stuff, shell souvenirs and Disney towels. Our Wal-Mart doesn't sell souvenirs. When I shop at home, I'm not able to buy things that spell out the name of my city in shells.

That's what I was thinking as we drove through Orlando and Kissimmee. That and: this is boring. There's really nothing to see beyond acre after acre of "We Buy Extra Tickets" signs and these ubiquitous hot air balloons that I believe were trying to entice people into buying time shares -- although, as I said, my in-laws own most time shares, now, so any potential buyers will have to negotiate with Sweetie's parents, who are sharp cookies.

The hot air balloons were inflatable decorations, like the giant Rudolph and sleigh full of drunken reindeer I put up at Christmas every year, only these were circus-colored inflatable hot-air-balloon shaped decorations that popped up about every 10 feet and asked you to stop and see about a time share. They were never in front of any store that appeared to be in the time share business (except that all the stores appeared to be in the time share/ticket/souvenir business) and never had the name of the company on them.

Around our house, in spring and summer, seemingly everyone has rummage sales, unloading all the junk they've accumulated in the prior year -- mostly from other rummage sales. I've noticed in recent years that the word "Rummage" is rarely used, which tells me that even the grandmas and stay-at-home moms of the world are becomming savvy marketers; just like the "used" car I used to buy is "pre-owned," the stuff you can buy on a table in someone's driveway isn't "rummage" anymore; it's something better. There are so many sales that as you drive around our city, you see hundreds of signs advertising "SALE" or "GARAGE SALE" or "NEIGHBORHOOD SALE" and come to believe that everyone in the city is selling everything they own.

It's that way with the time shares in Orlando and those balloons; I began to believe that every resident of Orlando was in the time share business, each selling them off. I pictured my in-laws, someday, with their own balloon.

After about 45 minutes, we made it to Gatorland. Gatorland is a relative bargain among the parks, at about $25 per person, plus $10 for a double stroller. The Babies! were free. We got them packed into the stroller and walked in. I was expecting, like Seaworld, a relatively family-friendly and sterile environment with lots of 'natural looking' environments made of fiberglass.


That's not Gatorland. Gatorland is gators. You walk in, and you're standing on a pier in what looks like an actual lake, and there are alligators all around you, just a few feet below your feet, swimming in the water and resting in the sun and piling on each other and generally being alligatory.

The effect is disconcerting; although they're separated from you by a few feet and some netting, there are so many of them that you can't help but feel as though you're in danger. I could tell that I was not the only person feeling that, because Sweetie was trying to position herself between the alligators and the twins; since they were all around us, she had a hard time of it and had to settle for hovering and moving in a circle around them, constantly on the lookout for the next alligator she had to move in front of.

There was an alligator show going on, guys running around and yelling into microphones and putting whole raw chickens onto their hands and encouraging the alligators to leap up and bite them off. I don't know why that's not on TV. I'd watch "Let's Feed Some Live Alligators" any day over those other reality shows. We watched that and tried to get a good vantage point, but it ended about as we could see what was going on, so we moved on to the rest of Gatorland, seeing some birds that you could feed by hand, and some parrots, and some snakes behind glass, and some goats (which Middle fed, causing The Boy to protest that we weren't here to feed goats because we have those in Wisconsin), before getting to a small stand which advertised that you could feed the gators.

I thought I was in heaven, but it would only get better in a second. The Gator Food was frozen hot dogs, two packages for $5. "Break them in half and throw them just to the side of the alligator's mouth," the old lady told me. I took the packages and tried calling for Sweetie, who was attempting to get keep the stroller someplace safely away from alligators, like Delaware. "Let's go feed the alligators," I said, holding up my frozen hot dogs.

"Be careful," the lady warned me. "The birds may mob you if they see you have food. They'll attack you." Now, this was vacationing: feeding dangerous animals with food that might cause me to inadvertenly remake a Hitchcock movie! But Sweetie was near me with the Babies!, so I made an executive decision to avoid the Babies! getting mobbed by birds: I called The Boy and Middle, and gave them the hot dogs. Then, I got my camera ready in case they were mobbed by birds.

The birds, fortunately or not, depending on your perspective, paid them no attention, and they wandered out onto a pier where they could toss the hot dogs to the massed alligators, which swam right up to the edge of the pier by the netting, all scaly and large and ponderous and sharp teeth and sleepy eyes. They were surrounded in the water by an astonishing variety of birds and a seething mass of fish.

You could feed the fish, too, for a quarter, and Middle did that. Middle never met an animal she wouldn't feed, and in fact has not yet met one she would not feed, take in, care for, live with, and allow to sleep on her bed. The fish grouped around her as she tossed fish food out there for them. The Boy wondered if the alligators ate the fish, and I guessed that they would, but why would they bother when someone was always tossing them hot dogs? (That also told me that I have a lot in common with the alligators: I'd never eat fish if a hot dog were available, either.)

While they were doing that, I was walking Mr Bunches along the pier by hand while Sweetie quietly had a stroke back on solid land. Mr Bunches was following a stork-like bird that was walking around trying to score some hot dogs. Holding my hand, he'd walk a few steps closer, and the bird would eye him, then move a few steps further away. We made our way back to land like that, and eventually The Boy and Middle ran out of things to throw at animals, and we moved on down the line.

At one end of the park was a refreshment stand where we paused to get some Gator Snacks -- feeding alligator to us. You could buy Gator Nuggets, or Gator Ribs, or a Gator Sampler. The Boy and I got some sodas (in souvenir cups, of course), and a Gator Sampler. The girls got french fries.

Alligator has the consistency of fish, but a flavor that's like the fatty part of a pork chop, only a little greasier. The alligator nuggets were okay, but nothing you'd want to eat a lot of. The ribs tasted okay, too, but were filled with dozens of tiny bones that I had to spit and pull out of my mouth. All told, I doubt we'll be seeing Oscar Mayer's Alligatorony in the stores anytime soon.

There were only a few stops left, looking at frogs and turtles and baby alligators, and we paused to buy some souvenirs including plastic alligators that squeaked for Mr F and Mr Bunches, and we bid goodbye to alligators, having killed a half-day there. I loved it. I loved seeing all the wildlife and feeling outnumbered by the alligators while still knowing I was safe; it was kind of like being in a foreign country where everyone around you is different and speaks a strange language, only in this foreign country they might also eat you.

From Gatorland and its awesome display of nature, we moved on to the exact opposite of nature, the Florida Mall. A trip to the mall is obligatory for us on vacation; the girls like to shop, and like it especially on trips. I myself could never see the allure, since they shop at the exact same stores that we have back home. But they wanted to shop, and so we'd picked out a couple of likely-looking malls to try to go to.

The first one we thought about going to was called "The Mall At Milennia," and even the name was a little intimidating to us. When you put "mall" before the rest of the name, you are sending a message to people like us, people who will want to come there with bits of Gator Nuggets on our shirts and sweaty Babies!: Don't. The kind of people who shop at a place called "The Mall At Another Place," (or, in this case, another time, since it was at "milennia") don't want to rub elbows with the kind of people who buy a ship made out of seashells.

We never even tried to go there, as it turned out, because the other mall they'd selected, "The Florida Mall," (which was not, apparently, impressed enough with itself to call it "The Mall At Florida") was just up the road from Gatorland. So we made it there, and got the twins into new strollers, and then split up into guys and girls. The girls were going to shop; the guys were going to eat and use their strollers as bumper cars as they roamed through the mall in search of sugar and distraction.

The Boy and the twins and I made our way to the food court, where we first made sure the twins ate, feeding them whatever we had handy: bananas, some baby food, potato chips, mushy brownies that had been in the backpack the whole time. With the Babies! full, we began to get our own food. While The Boy settled for a cajun platter-- you get the best cajun food in a mall food court, I'm sure -- Mr Bunches and I roamed around looking for something more exotic, and we found it in The Crepe Market, where they would make a crepe right before your eyes and fill it with just about anything.

I ordered a Pizza Crepe and a Diet Coke ($8.50) and waited by the counter while they prepared it. That had me, with Mr Bunches in his stroller, standing right next to a sub sandwich restaurant, and as we waited for my Pizza Crepe, a lady came out and began offering samples of sub sandwiches. And not just any old samples, either -- these were about 1/4 of the sub, huge samples, practically a free sandwich.

That really put me in a bind. The etiquette for samples is this: You get one, and you have to pretend that there is at least some chance that you will, after eating the sample, buy one of the thing you have sampled. So when I walk through the grocery store and they've got pizza samples or ice cream samples or crackers or something, I take a sample and eat it, and declare it good, and listen while the person tells me what deal I could get if I bought that. I then consider for a second and then move on. I never actually buy the sampled item; I just act as though I'm going to do so.

I could not do that in the Crepe line. I was clearly in line for food that I was going to eat for lunch. To get a sandwich sample, I would have to move away from my actual lunch, take a sandwich piece, and then move right back to where my crepe was being made, and then go eat my lunch. I could not, under those circumstances, make even a pretense that I would order a sub sandwich for lunch. And isn't that the whole reason they're offering those samples? It's not just free food; it's free food they hope you will then buy. Taking a sample when I'm clearly waiting for my 'real' lunch seemed so rude; it would be like slapping the sample lady.

So I stood there, waiting for my crepe and cursing fate that she had not come out two minutes earlier, before I'd ordered. But the crepe was good. (Later, I doubled back through the food court to see if there were more sub samples available, which I could take even though now I was full and there was no way I'd order a sandwich. I have a complex moral code, but one I stick to rigidly. The lady was gone, though.)

With lunch done, The Boy and I had time to kill, which we did by roaming randomly from store to store, looking at the autographed memorabilia here, or the actual wave pool with surfers there, pausing to buy giant chocolate chip cookies, and then we got to the M&M Store.

The M&M Store is a new phenomenon. In Las Vegas, they have one with an M&M Museum, and you can go there and buy any sort of M&M or M&M junk you want -- except that you still cannot get a real "Giant M&M." I'm forever disappointed by that; when "Giant M&Ms" came out, I pictured an M&M the size of a doughnut, a giant mass of chocolate with all the nonmelting candy shell I could ever want. Then, I bought some and they were just slightly larger M&Ms.

That puts M&Ms into the same category as tidal pools and the Green Flash: things I imagine to exist but will likely never see.

I have bad experiences with the M&M store. In Las Vegas, I told the kids they could get some M&Ms and when it came time to check out, it turned out that we were buying one hundred and thirty dollars' worth of M&Ms. We could have opened our own M&M Museum.

In Florida, my experience was almost worse. We wandered through the store, imagining what life would be like if we had an M&M Coffee mug and trying to determine what the connection was between Indiana Jones and M&Ms, and I found my way, like I always do, to the clearance section, where you could buy "M&M 2000" shirts for only $6.99. Why are they still $6.99? I wondered. Really, was there ever a market for the "M&M 2000" shirt? Were there people who were thinking Sure, the millenium is exciting, but it needs a little something extra to show that while it's the turn of the century, it also will not melt in my hands. I was tempted to buy one just for the heck of it, but $6.99 was a little high priced for me.

While I looked at them, the salesgirls came a little closer, and one of them said something. I didn't know if she was talking to me, so I merely nodded. She then said, a little louder, something that I heard as this:

"There's the dumber kid."

I stared at her. She smiled kindly at me and pointed at Mr F, who I was pushing in his stroller.

"That's him?" said the other one.

"That's the dumber kid," the girl said again. I swear that's what she said. She smiled again at me, and I wondered what to do. Why was she just randomly insulting us? What had we done? Should I get angry? Should I say "Look, he's not even two, what do you expect, he's very bright for a toddler." I just kept quiet, and resolved to head out and avoid a confrontation with this girl who obviously had issues about toddlers. Plus, dumber than who? Her? Mr Bunches? How could she make that assessment?

As I turned the stroller around, the girl gave me a weird look, and Mr F began pounding his hands on the plastic sides, making quite a racket.

"See?" said the girl. "He's the DRUMMER kid."

But I'm pretty sure I heard it correctly the first two times.

We met up with Sweetie and Middle not long after that, stopped at another candy store that had Mr F's real name in it -- so now Mr F not only had access to personalized license plates and sippy cups and t-shirts, but he had a candy store named after him, with t-shirts and all, while Mr Bunches' name was still nowhere to be found -- and headed on back to the time share, having seen the full panoply of central Florida's charms that day.




Emoticon:

righteous indignationbybrianefp
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