Turtles, Snails, and Sweet Boys

Yesterday we went to the zoo with our dear friends, Lacey and Zazie. Zazie is one and wore a pink tutu with wings attached to the back, and Lacey is her mom, a doctoral candidate at NYU in the field of Popular Amusements. I’m not a fan of zoos as a rule, but the Audubon Zoo is not terrible as far as zoos go. The animals are not kept in cages, and even though it makes me sick that they’re not free in their natural habitat, they have it pretty good over there.
As always, Henry and Annabelle were more enchanted with the statues around the zoo than the animals themselves. They ran and sat on the back of the duck statues and were hugging the cardboard cutouts of ghosts and pumpkins.
We were standing in front of the fountain pool with the elephant statue at the front ot the zoo when Lacey overheard two little boys talking. They were about 10. One said, “I bet I could take that elephant in a fight!” The other replied, (Lacey thought he would probably grow up to be gay) “I don’t know about that but look at the color of the water. It’s beautiful!”
A few minutes later, we were in a pen with the farm animals and a big boy, about 16, knocked Zazie over. He apologized profusely, but even sweeter, he got down on his knees so he could look Zazie in the eye to apologize. She was so fascinated by him she stopped crying. It renewed my faith in humanity to see a teenage boy acting so sweet.
Later, as we walked home, two 8 year-old boys were shuffling across the path very slowly. “Look at the snails” I said to Annabelle. The boys glanced over at me and said very quietly, “We’re turtles.” i stood corrected. “Ah, they’re turtles.”
“Where?” Annabelle said, looking around.
“Right there,” I replied. “They’re pretending.”
I love seeing all these sweet boys. Makes me feel better about the world.