It seemed like a good idea at the time. Face it. We’ve all been there. We’ve gone out on a nocturnal limb. Luckily, we didn’t get our arm bitten off by a tiger.
Most of us are still trying to figure it out. On Monday after midnight, two men climb over a barbed wire fence at the Calgary Zoo and press (drunkenly stumble?) against the Siberian tiger enclosure. Screams, bloody flesh, a frantic cellphone call. One man is romantically involved with the zoo’s night security guard.
And you thought Jon and Kate Plus 8 had all the drama.
David Letterman’s marital woes? He doesn’t have barbed wire or bite marks to brag about, does he?
Let’s not be too harsh.
Certainly you’ve walked on the wild side.
I asked around. This is what I heard.
“I had sex on a balcony in Mexico, and really underestimated the number of insects that crawl and sting in that country.”
“After getting really drunk, I streaked across the busiest street in Red Deer.”
“I tried to lift someone while really drunk and tore my Achilles tendon.”
I guess “really drunk” is the preface to most misadventures.
Admittedly, I once got really drunk at the bars in Ottawa. It was summer, and I was a student and my dress was short, heels high, earrings big. I stumbled into a shiny car whose occupants said they would take me home.
I sat beside an MP I recognized from the Arctic.
It took a few minutes of awkward conversation for him to realize I wasn’t a prostitute.
His driver dropped me off. No tiger bites, but embarrassing. When the zoo press release came to my inbox, I wondered what it would be like to type the beginning words: “At approximately 1:00 a.m. on Monday, October 5, 2009, two men made an unauthorized entry to the zoo.”
The trespassers have given a twist to, “It was a dark and stormy night.”
Let’s not judge too harshly. The mirror turns back on us all too quickly.
