Our third day in Nashville, we went to the zoo. We took an Uber there for just $12, and I was once again thrilled for having discovered this car service on our trip. I could take 15 more trips at that rate, and I’d still be better off than having rented a car.
My son and I wound our way through the zoo, petting kangaroo, marveling at the bright salmon color of the flamingos, and brushing goats. There was a frog jumping up and down so persistently right in front of the glass case, I could swear he was asking us to help him get out. In a section called, “Expedition Peru: Trek of the Andean Bear,” there was a glass room from which you could watch the bears, and on the ledge, there was a rubber ball you could hold up against the glass and pretend to throw it, and one of the bears would walk up to the glass and try to take it from you. Freaky, really, that the only thing between you and a ferocious black bear – and something the bear really, really wanted — was a piece of glass.
We spent four or five hours at the zoo, long enough to have lunch, a snack, a whole bottle of water and then get parched again. As our time there was coming to a close, I saw I had just 16% left on my cell phone battery, and I knew I wanted more than that so I could call Uber and have enough battery to await their return call when they’d arrived.
I tried to charge my phone at an outlet I saw near the turtle area. I plugged in my phone and then covered it with my knapsack, but the outlet was just outside the tortoise pen. I sat on one of the benches that surrounded the area as these beautiful reptiles kept circling, pressing up against my legs like a dog every time they moved under my bench. Their shells were strikingly hard and smooth, and the dark grey points, each surrounded by a series of beige and light grey concentric circles, looked like precious gems. As I watched their majesty, all I could think of was my knapsack and cell phone, charging on a pole outside the turtle pit. I was so preoccupied with my belongings, thinking someone would see my knapsack unattended and alert zoo personnel, who would come and seize it along with my cell phone, that I could barely enjoy the reptiles. It reminded me of a bit in a show I saw by the performance artist Spalding Gray, where he discussed how during the filming of “The Killing Fields,” in Phuket, Thailand, the actors went for a swim in the most beautiful, warm, blue-green water he’d ever seen. And as he lay floating in paradise, all he could think of was his wallet on his beach towel, and he envisioned it from above: a man lying afloat, in a blue green sea, with arrows coming out of his head and falling onto the wallet on the beach, another arrow coming out of his head and falling onto his wallet on the beach.
After about 10 minutes, we left the turtle area, and I grabbed my phone. To my disappointment, the charge bar said just 18%. Further down the road was a large playground, with tree houses to climb and large nets on which to hang. As my son traversed the landings and ladders, I orbited the playground looking for electrical outlets like a coke addict hopelessly looking under beds and tables for an unused vial.
Soon, the playground was shut down as the zoo was about to close. We marched toward the exit, and my son stopped at what was probably the last stuffed animal stand in the park and asked me to buy him yet another stuffie that he will love like a brother, for 10 minutes, before it’s relegated to being a dog toy. As he perused the cheaper $5 section of the stuffed animal kingdom, I asked the worker manning the booth if there was an outlet nearby. He pointed to one on the ground near a light post. I felt relief, like finding water in a desert. As I tried to jam my charger plug into it, he said, “I’m not sure if it works.”
I kneeled on the ground staring at the charge bar on the phone for a minute or two, but it didn’t budge. The outlet was a GFI plug so I started playing with the test/reset buttons in the middle of the it, thinking I was a big man because I know how to navigate complicated electronics But once I started pressing the buttons, I couldn’t tell which was the ‘test’ button and which was the ‘reset,’ button. One makes the outlet work. One does not. Since I didn’t have my readers with me, I couldn’t see which was the ‘reset’ button and which was the ‘test’ button so I just kept pressing both until I resigned myself to the fact that the outlet was broken. I paid for my son’s stuffie, and we left.
As we neared the exit of the zoo, I saw a proper, indoor gift shop. It was like the last exit before the toll bridge. My cell phone battery was down to 11%. I decided to call Uber now and leave the phone charging in the warm confines of a gift shop while my son and I waited for the car to arrive, so we’d have a nice plucky battery when the driver called to tell us he was waiting. The Uber app said our driver was 11 minutes away.
“Do you have an outlet?” I asked a woman behind the counter.
She pointed to an outlet in the floor, under a metal flap. I left the phone there while I ran to the bathroom. When I returned, my son had made a mental list of all the things he wanted. No, no, and no, I told him. Just then, the phone rang. It was the Uber driver. I grabbed the phone from the floor outlet, and the driver said he was waiting for us at the Askewgi Building.
“The what?” I asked. “We’re at the zoo.”
“The zoo?!?” he said. “The pin didn’t drop there.”
I didn’t know anything about this pin dropping nonsense.
“Well, we’re at the zoo. Can you get us?” I asked.
“I’m really far from there,” he said.
“I’ll call another driver,” I said and hung up.
I requested a new driver and as soon as one seemed to pick up the request, I called him.
“I’m at the zoo. I’m in the giraffe lot. I don’t care what your pins say. That’s where we are. The zoo. Can you get us? And if you can’t reach us when you get here, it’s because my phone has died. Just know, we are waiting for you in the giraffe lot,” I said.
“I’ll be a few minutes. I’m a little ways a way,” he said. “It’ll be a white car.”
My son kept trying to tell me something as the man spoke. I finally said, “Shshsh! I’m talking!”
When I hung up, he said, “There are two giraffe lots.”
“No there’s not. The sign is right here, and there’s one more on the other side of this lot,” I said. “One lot. Two signs.”
“There’s another giraffe lot over there,” he said.
“No, there’s not. That doesn’t make sense,” I said, feeling like there are some things adults understand, by logic. You don’t have to see a sign to know you’re right.
My son and I sat in the lot, watching the last of the cars exiting the zoo. There were seven cars left in the whole parking lot, presumably employees. I counted as each one left. Now six. Now five. Four. A motorcycle and a golf cart drove in. After a few minutes, the motorcycle drove back out.
It was 6:15 p.m. The sky was still light, but darkness was less than an hour away. I knew we couldn’t stand in a dark parking lot with no cell phone. If the driver didn’t arrive in 20 minutes, I was going to head to the main road and just start walking. Surely, I’d find a taxi or an outlet before we reached the city line.
After about 15 minutes, we spotted a white car entering the parking lot, about a quarter of a mile away.
“That’s him,” I told my son. “That’s him.”
I started waiving my arms. I feared for a moment how idiotic I would have looked if it weren’t him, but who else was it going to be? And surely, people stranded on a desert island waving at a distant boat out at sea don’t ever fear embarrassment for waving at the wrong boat.
As the driver got closer, he spotted me and drove over. As we got in the car, he said, “I was heading over there.” He pointed to a lot in the distance. “It said giraffe lot.”
My son looked at me.
We closed the car door, and as our driver exited the zoo parking lot and turned on to the main road back to Nashville, I could see the tall buildings of the city in the distance. I leaned back in the seat of the Uber and listened to my son chat away with the driver, and was glad for a few minutes to have someone else take charge.
The Dancing Egg 
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