Queued Up

There is so much to love about painted turtles. Is it how, like most cold-blooded reptiles, they are sun worshipers, hauling themselves out on a log to bask for the day? Is it their vigilance, slipping off a log the minute they catch any whiff of an interloper? Is it their gentle faces “painted with red and orange”? Is it their impressive journey from their home in the water to the land to nest like their ancestors did many millions of years ago? Is it that their gender is determined by how high the temperatures are when they are in their nests? These are just some of the reasons I love turtles.

On sunny mornings I like to catch a glimpse of a log full of turtles at Sunrise Park. Often one turtle is resting on another up and down the log, domino fashion. Any fans of Dr. Seuss’ Yertle the Turtle are familiar with Seuss’s version of this story, which involves a very tall stack of turtles and one very bossy turtle who gets his just desserts when the stack tumbles, and he is pitched into the mud. Naturally the underdog turtle at the bottom of the stack warned of an impending disaster. It seems like the only literary connections I can make these days are from children’s books, limiting any chance of being grouped with any intellectual.

But whether it is a turtle or a human queueing up, the behavior is just fascinating. People do it so well abroad and sometimes not so well here. As teenagers, when we ventured out of town and found ourselves in some civilized locale, we resorted to this style of keeping together. This was prompted by some of us getting lost at Candlestick Park or in a steamy underground metro. So, the queue made some sense. Usually, my dad or mom would be leading the way attempting to imbue culture into their offspring when all we were really looking for were zoos and record stores. One evening the queue got messed up, and we sauntered into a little restaurant, our parents pulling up the rear. Well, the Matre’d took one look at our bell bottom jeans and long greasy hair and led us to the least desirable table in the restaurant, one near the kitchen. Now my dad had expectations that we all behave around the dinner table, and that we always did when traveling. So he was not happy to have been sequestered in this spot and called over the owner of the restaurant. They had quite a repartee, and our eyes were like saucers because my dad was not one to complain. The discussion ended when my dad offered to take us elsewhere to dine. Quickly another table was found for us in a prime location, and that was that.

As a side bar, around this time I was being a big pill, and whenever we left town, I decided the only food I would eat on any menu was beef consommé, which basically looked like pond water. So, my parents were trying to make me more cosmopolitan, and I was digging my heels in and living off of three bowls of broth a day. Occasionally, they won the battle at dinner, but I was an expert at hiding any green beans under my potato and whenever they looked the other way, I would put my lamb chop in my napkin, and no one was the wiser. All these antics did not add to my already slim appeal. And I believe the antics instigated my parents to adopt two strategies which they employed intermittently: staying at places with a “kiddie dinner” or pawning us off on some strangers they met walking down the street. The first, kiddie dinners offered a separate dining venue for the younger set while our parents could catch a break from us. We never wanted to go, even though my mom assured me that they would offer food we would like, and we would make a bunch of new friends. We were suspect and went kicking and screaming even though we were too old to kick or scream. The other option was for my parents to find someone walking down the street, start up some casual banter and then ask if the locals would take their kids off their hands for the day on some adventure. We actually liked this option more as our surrogate parents for the day were usually a lot of fun. And I think it didn’t matter whether we were queued up or not, we saw all the sights and we ate crackers on some dirty picnic table so a true English queue could be saved for swankier jaunts.

And, circling back, the turtles queued up in our local waterways look like the vision of refinement to me now. Sure, they shared a common ancestor with dinosaurs back a couple of hundred million years ago. But you can bet they evolved to eat a more varied diet than steaming bowls of consommé, and they probably never complained along the way.