WE RECOMMEND (THE GOOD PART)

I walked out of my office yesterday and saw something very eerie. Two planes were flying high above, leaving long trails of white smoke behind them. The planes, unfortunately, happened to be headed toward each other. I was expecting to be an eyewitness to a terrible collision, but they missed each other, one being higher than the other. But their paths of smoke did collide, creating a giant white cross in the sky. It may not have been the Virgin Mary appearing on the side of a trailer or on a honey bun, but it certainly seemed like a sign to me. A sign of what I don’t know. But I thought I’d better be a nice guy just in case. I had also just read David Waters’ “Faith Matters” column in The Commercial Appeal, which I always enjoy, and it was about taking Sunday off from the world and enjoying God’s creation. And since it was Sunday and I was at work and desperately wanted to not be, I left to take Waters’ advice and do one of my favorite things: go to the zoo and just wander around by myself, looking at the animals, and– more importantly– to enjoy one of God’s greatest creations, a corndog. Well, it seems that most of the animals had the same idea. All of the cats in Cat Country were either hiding or were sound asleep. They looked very much like my cat at 6 a.m., after she has clawed my forehead enough at 5 a.m. to wake me up and then eaten her Fancy Feast and half-and-half and gone back to bed, leaving me a nervous wreck. Every day. The monkeys were about the same. One looked at me and literally put his hands over his head and lowered it in total disgust. When I strolled over to see the orangutans, one turned his back on me and the other one crawled into an empty barrel. But I remained optimistic. When I walked into the Creatures of the Night area and removed my sunglass clips, I was amazed not only at how dark it was but how blurry they had made it. I could barely make out which animals were which. It actually caused me to become very disoriented and slightly nauseated, and, after circling around in a panic trying to get out, I finally found the exit door– only to discover, once out in the sunlight, that one of the lenses of my glasses had fallen out, thus leaving me half-blind. Luckily, it was attached to the sunglass clip in my pocket. I walked over to see the bears, and one of them was sitting in the exact position I sit in when occupying a barstool, only his head was leaned back instead of being lowered toward the floor. My very favorite animals, the California sea lions, were in pretty good form. I have this thing about the sea lions. I’m always convinced that no matter how big a crowd has gathered, they are looking directly at me. They are thinking, please tell these members of the great unwashed to leave us alone. We want to go home with you. We know we’ll have a great time living in your bathroom and drinking martinis. We know you’d feed us sea scallops instead of the stuff they feed us here. Oh, well. It was a nice day at the zoo just the same. And now it is a workday and there’s a jackhammer just outside my window tearing the street apart, and the lens of my glasses is now permanently lost, leaving me half-blind again and sitting at a desk that’s vibrating so hard things are falling off. David, would you please do something about Monday? Thanks.