Canned Hams

NOTE: The story below is very loosely based on actual events—so loosely, in fact, that if it tried to take a step forward, its pants would fall to the floor and it would tumble down a long concrete staircase. Therefore, I’ve turned it into a (mostly) fictional short story.

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It is 3:30 pm. The park closes at 5:00. The sign says the queue length is 85 minutes. But I am determined. . . .

Wendy and I are coming to the end of our day at Animal Kingdom. We are both 62. That’s a total of 124 years. As a result, we have difficulty navigating the place, even though we have a good, old-fashioned printed map.

Me: “So are we in Africa or Asia?”

Wendy: “I don’t know. Look for a sign.”

Me: “What’s that one say?”

Wendy: “‘Dim Sum and Den Sum.’”

Me, after a pause: “Ohhh-kayyy, is that supposed to communicate anything?”

Wendy: “I think they sell shoes. Let’s look at the map.” We do so, and then I look at our surroundings to orient myself.

Me, after turning around 720 degrees: “The water is over there. So if the ‘Dim Sum’ place is here on the map, we must be . . . right . . . here!” I point mapward with one victorious finger.

“In the Swiss Family Robinson Treehouse?”

“Sorry, wrong map. We are here!”

“OK, but then the water should be on our left, and it’s on our right.”

I turn another 180 degrees: “There. Fixed that problem.”

Wendy: “Mm-hmm.” Pause. “So, are we in Africa or Asia?”

Me: “I don’t know. Look for a sign.”

We spend a good portion of our day meandering in this kind of confused stupor.

But it doesn’t matter where you go in Animal Kingdom, you will see exotic live animals. Seeing exotic live animals is a lot of fun for us elderly folk.

Me: “Excuse, me, miss, what kind of bird is that?”

Perky youthful cast member, smiling and pointing with two fingers, “My pleasure! A chicken!”

Me: “Wow, it’s big.”

Perky youthful cast member: “My pleasure! Yes, it is!”

Me: “And what kind of bird is this?”

Youthful Cast Member pointing with two fingers: “My pleasure! That, sir, is a pigeon!”

Me: “A pigeon! Wow! Hey, honey, come over here! There’s a chicken and a pigeon! Bring the camera!”

Anyway, as I stated earlier, it is now 3:30, and there is one attraction we have yet to see—the most popular attraction at Animal Kingdom: Pandora, the Flight of Passage!

Into the Queue

Wendy says, in a tone that subtly expresses exhaustion, lack of interest, and defeat: “An eighty-five-minute wait!?”

But I have been looking forward to this ride since I first heard about it about three days ago. And I’m not about to allow my long-held hopes be dashed by an 85-minute wait—or by an exhausted, uninterested, defeated wife.

“Yeah, but the lines usually don’t take as long as they predict. They just do that to keep losers from riding. Besides, all the incredible staging while you’re waiting in line keeps your mind off the time you’re wastin—spending.”

“‘Staging’?”

“You know, the way they immerse you in the story—to keep you from noticing how old you’re getting—by decorating the line area to match the theme of the ride. Come on, it’ll be fun!”

As we have been talking, I have been inching us closer and closer to the queue. Soon we are in it, and Wendy apparently hasn’t even noticed! To say that we are packed against other humans as tightly as sardines in a can would be to understate the situation.

As my stomach bumps the backside of a tall fellow who says he got in line in 1992, I hear my wife moan from behind me, “My feet are killing me!”

Already tired of her defeatist attitude, I turn around to face her. My left shoulder hits a baby in the face, my right shoulder knocks a woman’s wig askew. I am ready to give my “Let’s Be Thankful We’re at Animal Kingdom and Not Be a Grumpy Grouch” speech. But before I say a word, I look down at her feet, which are supposedly “killing her.”

They look . . . odd. Kind of squishy and vague. I decide not to give the speech, turning to face front once again and accidentally tripping over a stroller and landing on a toddler. Even though I holler “Sorry!” on my way down, the mother responds with an unreasonable outburst of anger. I wait until she’s finished, calmly rise from the screaming child’s head, dust off my britches, and say, “Let’s be thankful we’re at Animal Kingdom and not be a grumpy grouch, hmmm?”

I slowly and carefully turn my head to make sure Wendy is still back there. “Don’t look at me,” she says. “I don’t know you.”

Something is wrong, though. She seems shorter than usual. By bending way forward and looking backward between my knees, I see that her feet have continued to deteriorate. Each one is a smooshy little puddle that sort of drags along behind its ankle. From my inverted vantage point I consider asking her whether she has noticed this unprecedented phenomenon. Fearing that such a conversation might lead to losing our place in line, I forgo the thought.

Before I can straighten up again, a stunning event happens.

The line moves.

Incredibly, the line moves forward one-half step! “Now we’re movin’!” I holler up at Wendy from between my own knees. “And we’ve only been in line five minutes!”

“Twenty-five, but who’s counting?” she mutters.

I am concerned about extricating myself from the paper-clip-like pose into which I have gotten myself, since an old woman has her cane tightly wedged against my right gluteus maximus and a six-year-old with an all-day sucker is hovering dangerously close to my left ear. Nonetheless, I must do so, since my back is now killing me, and I don’t know what I’ll do if it turns all smooshy like Wendy’s feet.

Ah! That’s better! I am now standing fully erect! Yes, the old woman is now whimpering on the ground, her cane still firmly wedged against my right gluteus maximus, and, yes, I have an all-day-sucker hanging from the back of my head, but I’m unquestionably standing up once again!

Carefully I turn my head and wink at Wendy. “Isn’t this fun!?”

“Move!” she says.

I take another half-step forward.

“Immersive Staging”

Eventually we enter the indoor part of the queue with its cleverly Imagineered immersive staging. I learn that “immersive staging” for this ride consists of walking through an ever-darkening, brown-walled cave with dusty lights overhead. It is not impressive. It is not fun. It is hot. It is crowded. And there is no way out.

Nevertheless, in a heroic effort to encourage my wife, I turn to her (my left elbow hits a sweet young heavily tattooed mother in the mouth, and she responds by saying some words that I don’t think her kids should be hearing) and say, “Wow, honey! Look at all this cool immersive staging!”

She doesn’t reply, and I can see that her eyes are filled with dreadful resignation.

She is yet shorter! I glance down. Where are her ankles!?

Now, I know she had ankles this morning when we left our room because she asked me to hand her a pair of ankle socks, and one certainly doesn’t need ankle socks if one has no ankles. That would be like my asking for a muscle shirt even though I have no muscles.

The puddles have grown in size, and her calves are half gone. Brevity being the better part of valor, I say nothing.

“If this cave gets any smaller or hotter or more crowded, I’m going to have a panic attack!” she threatens.

You see, back when my wife was sixteen, friends locked her in a walk-in refrigerator as a joke. She and her bestie weren’t in there long, really, when you consider life as a whole—probably just two or three teensy-weensy hours. The experience, though, left her intensely claustrophobic.

“Hey, honey,” I say to lighten the mood, “did you hear about the nun who had to leave the convent?” I pause for effect. “She had cloisterphobia!” I bend over to slap my knee but hit someone’s emotional support iguana by mistake.

Did you know that iguanas can bite? Neither did I.

We spend the next couple of hours shuffling forward every twenty minutes or so, surrounded by immersive staging that keeps getting smaller and hotter and crowdeder.

I am fascinated by the psychology that goes into amusement park queue design, by the way. You can see some of the line ahead of you, but never all of it. “Look, honey, people are going through a door on the other side of this room! I’ll bet that’s where you get on the ride!”

Oh, you poor, naïve, innocent, deluded boob.

That is the first of fifteen rooms you are going to enter, and upon entering each one, you will look at the exit and say, “Look, honey, people are going through a door on the other side of this room! I’ll bet that’s where you get on the ride!”

After we pass the eighty-five-minute mark and are in the thirteenth room, even my nerves are getting a bit frayed. And Wendy continues to suffer, consisting now of two portions: herself from the waist up and a puddle from the waist down. She is moving forward by dragging the puddle behind her, using her hands as feet. Of course, this concerns me—I’m concerned that she might use this slight disability as an excuse to get out of line. I pretend not to notice.

“Not Cool”

I don’t have a good record when it comes to hiding my frustration in lengthy queues. Just yesterday we were in a slow-moving line for Pirates of the Caribbean. The cave we were in (Are all queues in caves?) widened out at one point, allowing room for people to crowd forward rather than staying in a calm, organized one-person-at-a-time queue. From behind us a woman (I shall call her “Karen”) moved right past us to fill in the open spot. I consider this to be cheating.

Embarrassed for her, Karen’s family members called her back. As she passed us heading back to them, she loudly proclaimed, “Well, if people are too stupid to move up. . . !”

That rankled.

Soon our family boarded our little boat to enjoy watching pirates hilariously rob and humorously plunder and comically assault innocent townspeople. And I looked back and saw Karen still standing on the dock.

I waved merrily to get her attention. Cupping my hands around my mouth, I hollered, “I may be stupid, but I’m still ahead of you!”

So now I end up irritated in this line as well, because, after all this waiting, a guy comes past ducking under the railings: “Scuse me. Sorry. Scuse me,” passing dozens of people who got into this line back in the previous millennium.

I want to say, “So the rest of us have to wait in this line a thousand people long, but you, oh, YOU are so important that you don’t have to bother yourself with those kinds of inconveniences! You get to play by your own rules, and all these other wimps are just letting you play! Well, not this wimp, buddy!”

That’s what I want to say. But what I actually say, as he cuts in front of me and ducks under the railing on my left, is, “Not cool.”

“What!?” I hear him say from just behind my left shoulder. “What did you say?”

I respond with calm aplomb, knowing that I am unassailably on the side of Right. I turn to him without plowing into anyone for once (for some reason everyone has backed away from me) and say, “You’re not supposed to do that!”

“My family is up there!” he shouts. “My family is up there!” He points vigorously toward the front of the line.

For the first time I notice his shoulders and biceps, which are the size of canned hams. I decide not to exacerbate the situation, so I shrug as though it means nothing to me and watch him continue under the barriers and gradually disappear, still repeatedly hollering, “My family is up there!”

I turn my head to make sure Wendy is still behind me. “Don’t look at me,” she says again. “I don’t know you.”

Party of Two

Finally, finally we reach the preboarding area. The room is wide and cool, with a high ceiling. I hear a “shlurp” behind me and look back. Thankfully, Wendy has reconstituted herself.

At that moment a cast member comes down our line. “My pleasure! Party of two? My pleasure, party of two?” Wendy and I raise our hands and are immediately ushered forward.

“Ha-ha!” I holler at those in line whom we pass. “Losers! Next time come in a party of two!” I try to scoff, but it unexpectedly comes out as an unhinged chortle.

A perky but firm cast member tells each of us to stand on a number on the floor. Wendy is assigned number 11 in front of me; I look down to make sure I’m standing properly on number 12. OK! Let’s go!

I glance behind me, just curious, to see who is number 13. I look down at the number first. I see shoes. I see big shoes. I look up. The person in front of me is looking piercingly into my eyes. The situation takes a moment to register. But then I know.

It is Canned Hams.

Yep, out of the hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of people in this stupid queue, I have ended up right in front of . . . Canned Hams.

“So!” he says, rubbing the palms of his baseball-glove-like hands together. “My old nemesis!” I am impressed that he knows such a big word.

I smile weakly and say, “‘Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine.’ [Pause.]  Heh-heh. [Another pause. Then, in an effort to get an easy conversation going:] Boy, your earlobes are really close to your shoulders.”

He doesn’t laugh. “How did you get in front of me?”

My weak smile freezes on my face. “We, uh . . . We—” I swallow hard.

“How did you get in front of me?”

“Well, we, um, actually, we—we cut in line. It was the funniest thing, though! See, we—”

“Not cool, dude. Not cool.” Then, in a nasally-whiny sissy voice: “Yer naht supposeta dew that!”

“I don’t sound like that!” I say, realizing that stress and irritation have given my voice a nasally-whiny sissy quality.

As Canned Hams starts to ball up a fist, another perky but firm cast member suddenly shouts, “My pleasure, OK, everybody move forward to board the ride!” Oh bless you, perky but firm young cast member! Bless you!

We move forward and place ourselves on the motorcycle-like seats that will take us on this long-awaited experience. Up comes a hard cushion, locking in our backs. Protectors clamp around our feet and ankles.

“I can’t do this!” Wendy says, next to me. “I gotta get out of here!”

Yes, after a nearly two-hour wait, my longsuffering wife doesn’t even get to ride because she’s overcome with claustrophobia when she’s clamped into the seat.

A cheery cast member points to the exit with two fingers and follows her out. “My pleasure! This way! My pleasure! This way!”

“See ya when it’s over, babe!” I holler at her departing back. I hope my tone expresses regret combined with a longing to join her even though I have no intention of budging from this seat.

The ride begins. We fly through the air on the backs of banshees, dipping, swirling, winding, falling, flipping, wind in our hair, water spritzing our faces—all while our motorcycle-like chair is mimicking the motions to make it feel real.

Afterwards I look carefully at my phone for a couple of seconds while waiting for Canned Hams to leave. (I do not judge him, but it doesn’t look to me as though he’s with a family.) I am then reunited with Wendy.

“Wow! It was great!” I exude.

“Good. By the way, I timed it. You stood in line for two hours for a 75-second ride.”

I am agape.

“And,” she adds, “you have an all-day sucker hanging from the back of your head.”

Copyright 2024 by Steven Nyle Skaggs