The temperature hovered around sixteen degrees, with a windchill of five.
That wouldn’t stop me or my fifteen-year-old nephew, Cole, who had agreed to join me. As we plodded through several inches of snow toward the riverfront, I pounded him on the back and told him he was brave. Silently, I toyed with the idea that the poor guy was just genetically inclined toward poor decision-making.
A few hundred people gathered along the shoreline. Although my sister, Lori, and brother-in-law, Mike, didn’t make the plunge, they did come along to provide their son and me with moral support—and, more important—with towels and a pre-heated escape vehicle.
While we waited, Cole and I attempted to stave off frost-bite by wearing sweats and winter coats over our swimsuits. We were among the minority in this logic. Many of our comrades showed up shirtless, wearing only Speedos and flip-flops. One guy arrived in a bathrobe and Viking horns. Another wore nothing more than a threadbare pair of tighty-whities.
I rolled my eyes and pointed out the collection of circus characters to Cole. We laughed and laughed until Lori reminded us that he and I were active members of this freak show.
We waited, shaking on the shore, for nearly five years—or five minutes, if one must be technical. Finally, the announcer instructed all swimmers to prepare to plunge. Cole and I stripped down to our swimsuits. As our exposed skin turned pink, then red, then purple, we found we’d hurried up only to wait another five years.
“This isn’t so bad,” I mumbled to Cole, as we hugged ourselves and huddled together. “I’m not really that cold, are you?” The words escaped through my mouth into a frosty cloud in the air. He shrugged, his teeth chattering in response.
Before I realized the deep freeze had short-circuited the wiring from my brain to my mouth, the first wave of a hundred people in front of us suddenly raced into the river.
We’d been cautioned it would be safest to wait for the first running rush of aquanuts. We stood by for a few moments, watching and listening to the screams of swimmers splashing into the river. What we hadn’t considered, however, was that we would be plowed over when that same group immediately fled back toward shore.
As we attempted to maneuver past the oncoming frantic and frozen mob, I discovered polar plunging was, literally, a slippery slope toward madness. The crowd had compacted four inches of snow on the riverbank into a slick, icy hill. I sported an old pair of treadless sneakers that I planned to then toss in the trash. Perfect to wear in a mucky river. Not so advantageous when running down a frozen hill.
As I went air-born on the icy embankment, Cole—who was wearing his football cleats—grabbed my hand and steadied me.
Holding hands, we jumped into the water.
As we stood in the river, lying on the shore with a broken tailbone suddenly seemed the more comfortable alternative. My legs turned to ice. And then, no sensation at all.
“I can’t feel my legs,” Cole said.
“Legs?” I mumbled. “What legs?”
The shallow water reached just above our knees. We agreed that couldn’t count for a done deed. We needed to immerse ourselves in the full experience. Besides, I reasoned I might be better off once my entire body was as numb as my legs.
We crouched down until we were sitting on the bottom of the riverbed. As the water enveloped me, it deadened every nerve in my body. My brain went hazy. I gazed up at the two rescue squad trucks on shore. I prayed the EMT squad had already picked me out as the weakest member of the pack and was closely observing me, ready to swoop in for a rescue.
And then, as quickly as we’d raced into the water, Cole and I ran back toward the shore, our legs kicking up shards of ice.
I learned later that the water registered at a balmy thirty-two degrees. Damn toasty, compared to how the air felt once we exited the river. Did I mention it was cold? No, cold is how you feel when your furnace hasn’t kicked in yet in November. Or when you are forced to make a wintry walk from your heated office to your car. Or, perhaps, when your parka and mittens don’t soften the sting of a two-minute ride down a toboggan hill.
Exiting a glacial river into the arctic air? This was way, way beyond cold.
I blinked to shake off the icicles hanging from my eyelashes and attempted to dry off with a beach towel. I studied the nylon leggings I’d donned that morning. They had provided an extra layer of warmth during our wait and our brief dip. Regrettably, I’d slipped them on beneath my swimsuit—instead of wearing them over it. They were now impossible to remove without flashing the crowd. They clung to my legs, trapping a layer of frigid wetness from my waist to my ankles.
In the car on the way home, Cole reached down to take off his cleats. His shoe strings were frozen into solid knots.
As we slowly thawed, our bodies exploded into pins and needles. It would take two days before our body temperature felt normal.
I languished for fifteen minutes in a steaming shower, drank a cup of hot mocha in front of the fireplace, and reflected on the highs and lows—literally—of my day.
What struck me as most inconceivable was that three hundred other people had also gone for a winter dip that day. I wasn’t sure if this was reassuring or just plain frightening. Many of these crazy folks had wandered away from the riverfront, chatting about returning next year.
Me?
It would be a cold day in hell before I ever jumped in another frozen river.
Chapter 33:
TURN ME ON
Video may have killed the radio star, yet I figured no video would be necessary to kill my new, midlife radio career. All it would take was two hours of stuttering, stammering, and awkward silence.
I’d been asked to appear on The Theme Park, an eclectic two-hour show on WXUT/88.3 FM, the radio station of The University of Toledo. The hosts, Tim and Vicki, had been doing this weekly show together for twelve years. They were old pros, but they had never invited a guest host until now. If I bombed, I was sure to be both their first and their last.
My ability to entertain a radio audience on an early Saturday morning wasn’t promising. Weekends found me seldom dragging myself out of bed before ten. I managed to slurp down one Diet Coke on the drive to the station and finished off two more in the first hour. Still, I felt undercaffeinated and foggy. I hoped my fear-fueled adrenalin would carry me through.
Tim and Vicki started out the show with a few songs and then, after a quick introduction, Vicki turned to me. “So, tell us about The 52/52 Project,” she said.
It was a logical opening question, one which most interviewees would have anticipated and been prepared to answer. However, my mouth simply dropped and hung open.
“Umm,” I managed to reply. Vicki and I stared at each other in a moment of dead air. She smiled encouragingly. I shook off my knot of nerves, gathered my wits, and followed up with another, far more thoughtful, “Umm.”
But my co-hosts’ expertise soon helped calm my anxiety. Their easy conversation brushed over much of my stuttering and stammering, and it filled any moments of silence that would have stretched on if I were left to my own devices.
And, the two of them were so freaking fun—and funny!
Since it was primarily a music show, interspersed with their delightful banter, I wasn’t forced to fill the whole two hours with additional clever variations of “Umm.” Thank God. If I failed to help entertain their audience, at least their listeners would be in good on-air hands.
As suggested by the show’s name, each week of The Theme Park centered on a particular theme. Past ones included The Smell Show, Bad Hair Day, and The Cowbell Show. This week, they’d asked me to help choose music related to The 52/52 Project.
Thanks to their imagination and extensive music collection, we featured a diverse assortment of both popular and obscure songs. Some were tied to specific experiences, such as “Wedding Bell Blues” by the 5th Dimension (a nod to my wedding-crashing episode) and even a snippet from The Karate Kid: “Wax on, Wax off.” (Let’s hear it for my Brazilian wax.)
Other tunes related more generally to The 52/52 Project, including “I Wouldn’t Normally Do This Kind of Thing” by the Pet Shop Boys, “Dare to Be Stupid” by Weird Al Yankovic, and “Undignified Ways to Die” by Bob & Tom. I tried not to take Tim and Vicki’s selections too personally.
While the music carried me through much of the two-hour gig, I did make my share of radio newbie mistakes. More than once, I began babbling to my studio cohorts when I believed—mistakenly—that our microphones were turned off. Sigh.
In addition, I’d forgotten that the station’s Internet link, for those streaming the show, was also accompanied by a studio video image.
My mother later reported that she lost count of how many times she saw me adjust my bra strap.
Regardless, I sensed my on-air performance improved as the time passed. The caffeine gradually kicked in, and I settled into a more coherent and relaxed groove. While I delved into relaying some of my best and worst 52/52 experiences, I even managed a handful of witty comments.
As Vicki and I walked to our cars in the parking lot, I cracked open another can of Diet Coke and called the morning a success. I’d tackled my fear of public speaking, albeit in front of a mostly invisible audience. I only hoped they tuned in at my more articulate moments.
A few listeners contacted me later and told me I did A-OK. Gracious of them. I popped their checks in the mail.
But, to anyone who happened to view the live video stream and saw me staring blankly, dribbling Diet Coke down my chin, or obsessively readjusting my bra strap—keep in mind the camera adds ten pounds of humiliation.
Chapter 34:
IT’S ALL HAPPENING AT THE ZOO
Next to a good Bloody Mary, I love animals most of all. (And next to my family, of course. Ahem.)
I’d always had a terrific rapport with animals. At my very first high school job, working concessions at the Toledo Zoo, I spent my lunch hours tossing Hostess pies through a steel-barred cage to my favorite chimpanzee, Cocoa. In return, sweet Cocoa always threw a pile of shit at me.
Nearly thirty years later, I realized I had much to learn about reciprocal friendships, as well as about feeding and caring for zoo animals. Serving as zookeeper for a day would teach me that while small cages were thankfully a thing of the past and Hostess pies were now off-limits entirely, piles of poop remained a perennial zoo fixture.
I had toilet-trained two boys and cleaned up after my own pet menagerie for years. Dealing with zoo-doo, which I indeed mastered that day, wasn’t the most challenging aspect of this new experience.
No, the moment that prompted me to question my ability to love and care for all animals on God’s Good Earth was when I peered over the open enclosure of a hissing Chinese alligator.
I had no idea what kind of creatures I’d meet or what tasks I’d be handling when Tana—my contact at the Toledo Zoo—spoke to her boss, who spoke to his boss, who finally agreed to my request for an up-close encounter with zoo animals. All I knew was that an alligator encounter wasn’t what I anticipated. Couldn’t I just cuddle a koala?
Steve, the knowledgeable zoo guide assigned to accompany me, attempted reassurance. He told me that at just under four feet long, Mu Shu the Chinese alligator was considered a runt. Whatever. The gator’s size mattered little when he hissed and bared his teeth at me.
I leaped back. “Heh-heh-heh. Cute little guy. Um, any chance he could jump out of this open tank?”
“Probably,” Steve said. “But only if he really wanted to.”
Steve was a fabulous tour guide, but he’d be wise to steer clear of a career as a motivational speaker.
My job was to feed this menacing reptile. I was counting on breakfast being a bowlful of kibble. My heart sunk when, instead of pointing to a bag of Purina Alligator Chow, Steve gestured toward two dead mice on the counter.
Sure, they were tiny rodents that many people considered vermin. But I was the kind of weak-hearted sucker who, when discovering dozens of mice nesting in my garage, couldn’t bring myself to poison or trap-snap the necks of a single one. I live-trapped and released them all in a farm field a few miles from my subdivision. Mea culpa, Waterville farmers.
I braced myself for the task at hand. As Elton John sang so profoundly in The Lion King, this was the circle of life. I told myself I was only playing my necessary part. Fortunately, I wasn’t forced to hold the mice by their limp, pink tails. Steve handed me a pair of jumbo tweezers. I clutched a mouse in the forceps and dangled it into the exhibit.
It took some prodding by Steve before Mu Shu spied the mouse. Once he did, he stretched, snapped his long jaws shut, and swallowed it whole. I jumped back. His squinty eyes met my wide ones. Apparently the mouse had only whetted Mu Shu’s appetite. He stared back at me, still hungry.
Far better a dead mouse clenched within his jaw than my hand ending up there. I loaded up his second helping. I had no sooner begun to lower the mouse into the pool before Mu Shu lunged and grabbed it, nearly taking the forceps with it. He gulped it down and eyed me again. I hoped it would only take a couple minutes for him to realize his stomach was full and I wasn’t dessert.
Steve told me only about a hundred Chinese alligators still existed in the wild, mainly due to the pollution in the Yangtze River. These animals could likely become extinct, and zoos like this one were doing their best to maintain a population. I gazed down at Mu Shu with sudden sympathy for his extended family’s sad fate.
Even as I was filled with an unexpected affection for this creature, I was happy to move on. Until I saw our next stop was in front of the snake enclosures.
I’d never had a serious fear of snakes. Running across them in the wild didn’t frighten me, although my encounters in northwest Ohio had always been with the small and harmless garter snake variety.
Holding a huge ball python, while it curled around my arm, proved to be a slightly different story.
Steve told me to relax and let the snake rest against my arm, wrapping around it like a tree branch. I cradled the python for a few minutes, stroked his silky skin, and admired his beautiful markings. Then, the snake craned his head and hissed at me. As our eyes met, his forked tongue flickered. I thrust him back at Steve.
“OK, we’re good to go now,” I said. “We can check snakes off our list.”
“Oh, he wouldn’t hurt you,” Steve said, putting the python back in his exhibit. “He’s really a good boy.”
I eyed the snake. No reason to push my luck. I believe snakes deserve their place in our world: in zoos, in the wild, perhaps even in my own backyard. But just inches from my face? A definitive nope.
As we left the reptile area, I overheard two employees in the zoo’s educational center say they were leaving “to take the dingoes for a walk.” I could barely contain my excitement.
“Wait, you actually walk dingoes—on a leash?” I asked. They explained the dingoes were young, fairly tame, and being trained for educational shows. We followed them over to the theater for a training session.
The Toledo Zoo obtained the year-and-a-half-old animals when they were five months old. Dingoes, native to Australia, look somewhat like small German shepherds or cattle dogs. Their claim to fame was a viral news headline many years back: “The Dingo Ate My Baby.” (Final verdict: It really did.) I felt pretty sure neither of these creatures was that exact same dingo. And I was fairly confident I was way too big for one of them to carry me away as dinner.
Steve said the male, Indigo, was skittish, but the female, Tawny, was friendlier. Sure enough, the trainer allowed Tawny to walk right up to me. She sniffed me a couple times and promptly began licking my hand. I whispered to her that I was very sweet but I was certain I wouldn’t taste good.
As the lick-fest continued, I realized Tawny apparently just liked me. Aww! I instinctively leaned my head in close and began murmuring in baby talk to her, as I do with my dog, Ringo the Wonder Retriever.
Steve yanked me back and shook his head.
“Not so close
to your face,” he warned.
Oops. Right. Tawny appeared tame and well-trained, but she was still a naturally wild animal. I’d have hated for the title of this story to read, “The Dingo Ate My Face.”
I worked that day with several other animals, including wallabies and a gorgeous kookaburra that I actually heard laugh. (I neglected to ask if he was sitting in an old gum tree.) I spent the bulk of my zookeeper stint, however, with two white rhinos.
As I tiptoed into their pen, I mentally cued the charging rhinoceros scene from the movie Jumanji.
Probably no such worries with laid-back Sam and Lulu, who at forty-one and forty-six were considered geriatric. Even so, Robin, their caretaker, noted, “That doesn’t mean they couldn’t crush you.” A fair statement, with each of them weighing in at close to four thousand pounds.
I helped Robin prepare their breakfast. Thankfully, this menu included no dead mice. Their meal was a combination of what did indeed resemble Rhino Chow, along with hay, fresh fruit, and various vitamins and nutrients. Because rhinos have a heightened sense of smell and enjoy a variety of scents, Robin said she also sprinkled their enclosures with an assortment of odiferous items, including fresh basil leaves and Aqua Velva aftershave.
My duties included shoveling rhino poo. It was, literally, some heavy shit. And it did not smell a bit like Aqua Velva.
I squirted, soaped, and scrubbed the floors and walls of Lulu’s enclosure while she ate breakfast. Meanwhile, Sam grew restless. He rattled the bars with his huge horn. Robin reprimanded him, and he momentarily paused. But when she walked away to gather additional supplies, he started back up.
“No, Sam,” I shouted. “Stop it! Be a good boy!” He stared at me and stood still. I blinked. Huh. Why had this kind of verbal discipline never worked with my cats—or my two sons?
Next, it was bath time. I squirted down Sam, who backed his butt up against the bars, enjoying this daily routine.
Finding My Badass Self Page 15
