Month: January 2011

Crocodile! Crocodile! May we cross the Golden river?
Crocodile: Yes you may, if you have cyan on you.

I remember this being one of the hottest games of our youth. We roped off a portion of the street and positioned the crocodile in there, while the goal for the remaining was to cross the river. If you did have the colour the crocodile was looking for, you usually donned an unnecessarily supercilious expression and made a big scene about strolling across the river, while the poor crocodile looked more crocodile-like than crocodiles do – wanting to tear and rip you apart, but the rules of the game bound one. The ones who did not have the colour on them ran across while the croc lunged and grabbed. If caught, you were the next crocodile and so on.

When we first started playing this game, we were very much the rainbow kids – not very innovative in our colours. Then slowly, we expanded to yellowish purple and bluish orange. Anything to get all of them to run across. That was when, I quipped, “I have diglish danglie on my underwear” (Or whatever ridiculous colour it was), and stroll across. The modicums of decency allowed one to stroll across wearing a white panty without verification, but just a small pang of guilt. Best to leave the attitude behind on such occasions. But this method was soon vetoed, because one could not possibly have 255 colours, and all their permutations and combinations on a small panty, and some people claimed they did.

I loved playing this game because this is when I started taking an interest in vocabulary. I learnt about ‘Scarlet’ and ‘Turquoise’ and ‘Garnet’ and ‘Fushcia’ just so I could ask for these colours when it was my turn to be a crocodile. I am not even sure I knew the exact colour myself, but so didn’t the others, and I was finally queen of the river.

Imagine my chagrin then when years later, I said ‘Teal’ or ‘Mauve’ matter of factly only to have the husband stare at me like he was oggling through a glass barrier at a very mentally disturbed gorilla. “You mean purple?” he’d ask. I let it pass thinking the poor lad in his youth hadn’t played this enriching game of crocs and must not be penalised.

Then, I read this article about different kinds of color blindness. So, where some see palettes of colours, others don’t. It also gave me a tit-bit that I have suspected all along. Women are less prone to being color blind than men.

http://mikestake.wordpress.com/2011/01/11/im-blind-colorblind-that-is/
I quote:
“Color blindness is an inherited condition(usually anyway) most common in men ( 8-12 percent of Caucasian men, and less than one half of one percent in women).  ”

Not all forms of colour blindness is acute enough to not recognize primary colours – it is subtler than that. While we see the bottle greens and the olive greens, some of them just see green or possibly gray. I’d like to play Crocodile Crocodile with one of these people just to see how interesting it is.

My previous post told us about the sort of cloth headed things one needs to do when the partner is standing in the queue for food. The partner, in the meanwhile, was bored stiff. He took to observing those fellow sufferers in queue with him.

It turns out the family right in front of him had adopted a fundamentally different approach from the one we had adopted. We had decided to go for the divide and rule policy – queues vs scourging for seats. The family in front of us seemed to be staunch believers that everything was an experience to be shared by all. Every time, I circled back to see how the queue inhabitants were doing, I had the All-for-one-and-one-for-all song ringing in my head. Not that there was anything wrong with this approach, but it did seem like the children could have done with some time to sit quietly while the food was ordered. There were two children, and two adults. They did not seem to be complaining to us, but, I couldn’t help noticing the children spilling all over them and crying (1 infant plus one girl). At one point, the infant in their arms attempted a parabolic dive into a location known to her alone from her father’s arms. The older one had a most unpleasant expression on her face. Like Disneyland wasn’t at all the magical place she’d expected. The poor child probably thought that if somebody waved their wands, the food would find their way to them.

Ever the resilient birds, they waited. Nature had taught them that patience is rewarded with a plate of whatever was up there on the menu charts. The line snaked slowly, dully, their aching legs causing them to squat even. Eventually, they reached the counter.

The whole time, we’d been there, the menu was written in large signboards and were flashing in front of us. The husband and brother, who were the queue heroes for the day, had prepared  a magnificent list to recite at the counter, replete with dessert. According to them, if you were standing for this long, it might as well be a grand lunch. Admirable sentiments, if not wholly agreeable to the belly.

Imagine our chagrin therefore, that the all-for-one-family spent a full 10 minutes deciding what it was they planned to eat at the counter. I mean – the dishes were right there! Could they have missed the boards? Not possible, it was the only thing to look at, with hunger gnawing at your insides.

After getting the food, they would have to find seats and then eat. I wonder what they managed to see at the Park that day. We managed a decent list because the husband’s fine-tuned fast pass algorithm saw him rushing from one end to the other and picking up fast passes, so we could get the rides lined up. For the remaining part, we went for the less popular rides and had fun all the same.

Sometimes, divide and rule works.

I witnessed something for the first time during our trip to Disneyland this time – the parks were filled to capacity and people were being turned away at the park entrance. It was a revelation of sorts to me because I didn’t know the park had a capacity to begin with. It was always such a sea of folks that I imagined those at the gates just stood there and sighed people through thinking of flood gates and drops in an ocean or whatever it is folks at park entrances think about. This historic day meant that the usually long lines were enough to sink the heart of the most optimistic soul.

I shall outline for you the process of buying some food on days such as this:
1) Position 1 member with a cell phone in hand at the back of a line that is nowhere near a food court. It is preferable if this person is a stamina gun and one who posesses a certain capacity to entertain and amuse the mind while standing in the queue. Reading the park map only gets you through 10 minutes (even if you memorize the names of all rides and restaurants – I checked), and the lines to get food snaked much longer that.
2) The other member with a cell phone must be one skilled enough to spot movement from a mile away and swoop down like a hawk. Hawks, if you study them, don’t swoop on whims. They observe, detect and decide on when to swoop on their prey. Looking around, reading subtle body language signals from other members already seated and eating. Constrained in every way by the burden of being a human being means no wings, no huge wing spans from which to soar and spy, bad eye-sight and not to mention the fact that we actually have bladders with needs while hawks probably don’t.

I functioned as the latter in our team of food gatherers. I had going for me what hawks probably didn’t. Optimism. I walked around aimlessly, smiling at people who made the mistake of making eye contact at me. Finding seating for a party of two on a day like this is a challenge, try doing it for seven and then one sees why the stomach is such an irascible thing to live with. I mean, cannot it eat for the day in the morning at the free breakfast buffet? It certainly behaved like it was. Ate like it was preparing for a spell of 24 hours in famine country and yet 5 hours later, the glutton was asking for more. Tut!

After what seemed like hours, I found 2 folks shifting their left buttock. I swooped – I’d gotten 2 seats. This is where Genghis Khan can take his lessons from me. Having acquired this piece of real estate, I looked around once again and found a couple chatting with fervour. People were leaving them alone since their plates seemed full. But I saw their plates were full enough, but not full enough to last till team member (1) got to the head of the line. I sat there looking bored and played with their little one amusing himself by throwing things on the floor from the table. I peek-a-boo-ed and gurgled. I don’t know whether Genghis Khan actually enjoyed conquering more lands, I enjoyed the process of playing with this child leaving the harried ones to eat in peace. They were so grateful that they actually got another chair for me and joined the tables together before leaving.

And that is how one gets seven seats together on a day that Walt Disney’s spectre gets turned away from the park.

That is also the story of us becoming Dislineophobes (yes, creativity takes a hit when attention is diverted to survival, and I couldn’t find the word for fear of queues)

Happy New Year Folks!