I am a drowning man, sinking under the weight of expectation, pulled toward the murky depths of adult fallibility. I’m glad my children love going to this zoo every weekend, but with each trip around their favorite enclosure, I’m reminded of my mortal limitations.
I must shamefully admit: I am running out of facts to share with you about red pandas.
Last month, I was on top of the world. You two were blank slates when it came to red pandas, also known as the “lesser panda” (a fact you surely know by now). Armed with a quick Wikipedia search and the ability to read zoo exhibit signs just above your eyeline, I wowed you both with my intellectual bravado.
Alas, it was a sham.
This week, I am a husk bereft of new or interesting red panda facts. I am entrapped in a shameless façade of my own making. When I told you, for the third time, that red pandas inhabit coniferous forests and feed mainly on bamboo, your blank expressions made me want to throw myself in front of the Dippin’ Dots cart.
A nine-pound mammal has me in an intellectual chokehold.
My only purpose—in this children’s zoo and in this worldly existence—is to give my children a better life, starting with interesting tidbits about the sleeping raccoon-like creature they’ve sprinted toward four weekends in a row. If I can’t do that, what kind of father am I? I’ll confront that as soon as I manage to overhear another parent’s monologue about Ailurus fulgens. Oh, the red panda was formally described in 1852? We know this, you idiot. These rank amateurs are debris in my wake. No, I mustn’t jeer. I am an amateur. I am debris. I am nothing.
I would trade every worldly possession for my children to develop an interest in go-karts, if but for a single weekend.
Care for a fact about the Nubian ibex? Interesting anecdote about the North American porcupine? Tidbit about the radiated tortoise? It’s native to Southern Madagascar. I’m begging you to diversify your interests and also to use the bathroom now, because once we return to the red panda exhibit, there will be nowhere to pee—this fact we’ve learned over and over. No bathrooms, no respite from this zoological hellscape.
What do you mean you know female red pandas receptive to mating position themselves in the lordosis pose!? I told you that three times? Go buy a pretzel while I reconsider every one of my life decisions.
I receive no help from my nemesis, Brock, the Children’s Activity Coordinator. He stands so smug and aloof, clipboard in hand, waiting for the afternoon petting zoo group to begin. He loves to watch me squirm, stuttering like a fool, flailing about for new facts about the red panda’s eating schedule or if a red panda lives in a house like ours. Brock revels in my pain, and I will never trust another person ever again.
I am positive this entire ordeal is related to my relationship with my own father. He was a withholding man, never saying “I love you” or “Since 2015, the red panda has been listed as endangered on the IUCN Red List.”
I used to think I was Father of the Year. Now I think I should be thrown down a well. Perhaps I could tell my meager facts to the bugs.
It’s time I retired from these endeavors: as a disgraced and debunked red panda expert, as a failing father, and as a man. I’ll spend the rest of my days in the shade of the visitor center, biding my days with overworked field trip chaperones, underpaid babysitters, and grandparents taking exactly one thousand blurry photos on an iPad.
Goodbye, children, I bid you…
Oh, thank God, the kids are trying to poke a peacock with a stick. Did you two know that a peacock is only the name for a male? The animal species is actually called “peafowl.”
I know, I’m as awestruck as you.
