My Day with Stephen

Merry late thanksgiving everyone! Happy turkey day! And a good satanic worshipers appreciation day to all! Remember, if there’s a satanist in your famlily, be sure to give them a hug. For those of you all preparing outrageous feast with your families today, I would like you to sit back and appreciate that you are lucky to have all that. Not everybody does. For the first time in my life I won’t be able to be at home for thanksgiving dinner, and it’s turning out to be harder than I thought (on the bright side I also don have to work another Black Friday shift, thank Christ).

This post is about last Wednesday, when my dad came down to visit me here in Atlanta. He had business that he had to do in the area, and since he knew that I would be al alone on thanksgiving, he figured a family visit would be just the thing, and it was.

I requested the day off on Wednesday. While my team all packed up and went to work, I slept in like a champion. Dad arrived around 11:00 am. I was already up and dressed, finishing my breakfast and reading in the fellowship hall. I got his text and went outside to meet him. There he was to meet me with a smile and a hug right next to his big rental car. He had been so excited to show me the rental they gave him, a black dodge challenger. What I already knew and he was soon to find out was that those things are everywhere down here. I’m fairly certain it’s a state requirement to have one at this point. You get it at the border. After hopping into the Georgia-mobile dad immediately asked if there was anywhere good to eat nearby. I didn’t really know of anywhere other than fast food places, the closest “restaurant” was like a mile away. He decided to turn into a southern fast food place for some “Southern Food”. Now, I’ve officially been in the south for three months now, and I had never eaten in a place like this. Basically what “Southern Food” appeared to boil down to was grease and cheese smothering every possible thing it could. I wasn’t too hungry, so I nibbled on some chili cheese fries while my dad and I caught up. We hung around the place for close to an hour before we set off toward our destination for the day: the Georgia Aquarium.

I’ve been in Atlanta for a while, and I had heard light tales about the aquarium, but I’d never been. Dad was meeting someone who volunteered there the day after, so we both figured that it would be worth our time to check it out. That would later turn into an understatement. At first the place seemed rather ordinary. We purchased tickets to get inside and then addition ones for the dolphin show (because hey…dolphins). Once we walked into the main room though, things changed. I can only compare it to what it must be like to walk into the Natural History museum for the first time, or Hogwarts. The main area was a massive, open room, made even more impressive by the giant light up snowflakes hung for the holiday season. It was fairly full of what must be the normal mix of schoolchildren, teenagers, and older couples.

The first few rooms that we looked at were cool, if pretty standard. There was a small pool where you could pet some stingrays, and beyond it a series of rooms full of fish tanks and aquariums with smaller fish and turtles, pretty cool. The next… “exhibit” I guess you’d could say, had some more impressive tanks. They filled up entire walls and some of them even went into the ceiling. The fish inside were mostly Georgia basics I think, with one section holding some very docile, albino looking alligators, pretty cool. Things started to pick up around the cold water exhibit. Walking in we saw a few more small aquariums, all of them immediately forgotten, for all of the attention in the room gravitated toward a big two story tank at the front. Inside it, three huge beluga whales swam around playfully, running their sides along the glass every so often. They were incredible to watch as they went around in circles, soothing orchestral music playing in the background. We watched them for quite a while, a little awestruck, while they jumped in and out of the water. Once we could pry ourselves away from the whales we spent a little too much time waiting for an octopus to make some time to pose for pictures (that self righteous dick). Then we checked out the other parts of the exhibit. There were sea otters, sea horses, oh, and penguins! Little penguins just waddling around. Pretty goddamn cool!

Afterward we checked out a couple other tanks. We saw some piranhas and some more otters, not bad. Suddenly the time of the dolphin show was getting close, but we had time to check out one last thing. We saw a big light up sign next to a tunnel that said “Ocean Voyage”. We had no clue what it was, but there was time so we went to check it out. While we were chatting on our way in we peeked through a small little window previewing the exhibit, and through it we caught a glimpse at a beautifully huge undersea landscape absolutely teaming with aquatic life. Now incredibly excited, we hurried down into the plexiglass tunnel that led under the whole thing. Massive fish and manta rays swam overhead and we walked through. Dad had a mini panic attack because he was so distracted by what was above him he never thought to look down and notice that he was on a conveyer belt. After touring through the tunnel that went around the tank we stopped in the room displaying the whole thing with one giant window. We would later learn that Ocean Voyage is the biggest man-made aquatic tank in the entire world! It houses manta rays, sting rays, reef sharks, sand sharks, and even whale sharks, four massive whale sharks! They were some of the most beautiful things I have seen in my entire life. Needless to say we stayed and watched for quite a while. Incredibly, unbelievably cool!

Soon we had to pry ourselves away. It was dolphin time. We got ahead of the crowd and made our way over to the special dolphin theater arena. We got ourselves some nice seats and watched as a ton of people poured into the place. Soon it was all full and a quick documentary played describing the story of how the arena was made and how they got all the dolphins there, and then the show started. Now stop for a moment. I want you to picture what you would normally think a dolphin show would entail. You see trainers coming out to talk to the audience, telling you all the names of their dolphins as they do insane tricks and hand out fish like it was crack. The audience “oooo’s” and “ahhh’s” as a ton of people in the front row get all kinds of wet (heh), and of course that’s what it was, right? Wrong. When the lights dimmed and the announcer spoke out, what we first saw wasn’t dolphins, it wasn’t penguins, or a great white shark, no this was something far more terrifying. Out onto that stage bounced a singing man in a sparkly rainbow cape! You see Dolphin Tales is a full fledged stage musical revolving around the dolphins and a singing male lead known as The Star Spinner. It involved sea battles, special effects, and as I’ve mentioned, singing and dancing. It could be the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever laid eyes on. Strangely though I’d say it’s worth your time, especially if you got sold kids who are all into that Disney On Ice bullshit. The dolphins were seriously impressive once they got some stage time. They launched their trainers in the air and did all sorts of crazy backflips, posing on the glass and snorting down as much fish crack as was thrown to them. I enjoyed it once I could get past “sparkly cape dude”, and it really got me thinking, “how hard can it be to get a job feeding things at this place?” Dolphins need their crack. I’ll give it to them.

After walking out of the arena in the throb of people marveling over that guy’s sparkly cape, dad and I went back through Ocean Voyage one more time. We sat in front of the plexiglass window staring at the magnificent sea beasts inside for another solid hour. While there we found out that the aquarium has fucking sleepovers that you can do right in that room. You can sleep in front of the fucking whale sharks! Not only that, but you can go diving with them, in the tank! We watched people go in there! And yet another item has been added to my bucket list.

Finally stumbling out of the aquarium, we decided we were hungry. This was supposed to be my “early thanksgiving”, so dad told me to pick anywhere I wanted. We ended up deciding on The Hard Rock Cafe, because hey, I had never been. Having vegetarians on my team has made my meat consumption a little limited, so I loaded up on a barbecue entourage, oh and mashed potatoes of course. We sat and had a really nice meal. It was great to catch up with dad after so long. I had really been missing everyone from back home, so having him there felt really nice. I told him of all the stories I’ve already built up in the sort time I’ve been in this program, the places I’ve been, the people I’ve met, and the food I’ve eaten. After dinner we had a quick cup of coffee and listened to the waitresses sing YMCA, then we left.

Dad took me back to my housing around 9 o’clock. I introduced him to my team and my team leader and I showed him up to my little room. I made sure he met my new friends from outside of my team. Together, Danny, Cat, dad, and I stood around in the hall and chatted for a little while. Then it was time for him to go. I took him out to the Georgia challenger and we said goodbye, deciding to meet up one more time for lunch before he left the city. Pretty great.

So that’s my late thanksgiving family time post! It was really great to spend some time with my dad and see some badass things at the aquarium. It’s been getting harder and harder being away from everybody, but I feel better knowing that in just a few more weeks I’ll be back home for Christmas. Now that is going to feel incredible! I hope you all enjoyed this special post, and I hope you all had a great thanksgiving and that none of you died on Black Friday. Until next time.