Hannah's Random Thoughts #23: The Rainforest Cafe

As a child, was there ever anything that you liked but you hated at the exact same time? Maybe it was having a capful of hydrogen peroxide poured over a recent cut. (The stinging was AWFUL but the fizzies were nice.) Well, for me, this wonderful/terrible thing was the Rainforest Cafe. 

If we were in another city or traveling or anything, Sarah and I would always want to go to the Rainforest Cafe. I think it was because we liked the fish tank and the animal robots were fun and there were lots of colors and sometimes the desserts had sparklers in them but whenever we got there, the inevitable booming thunder made us panic as the terrifying gorilla screams only added to the cacophony. 

So it is kind of interesting that we always wanted to go there. 

BUT. I have another story that I didn’t think about until I started this one. And actually I should have thought of it, it was so much more obvious. So anyway, we were at the Rainforest Cafe and we went to the gift shop after the dinner. (Ah, yes, another reason why we liked the terrifying zoo.) We were all sort of wandering around in there, you know, trying to avoid looking directly into the creepy tree-lady’s eyes as we dug around her trunk to play with little stuffed frogs. (Seriously, why did we like the restaurant?) 

Anyway, (keep in mind this was after dinner so it was dark and kind of rainy and to make things worse I was far away in like, Orlando. Also I was little, I think I was five.) I saw my mom crossing the street. It all is like slow motion in my head. I see the back of her head, and through the rain I remember seeing the white strips of cross-walk paint. I reached out, about to grab her hand, when all of a sudden, familiar voices cause me to whip back around.

“Hannah… Hannah!” To my horror, my whole family (yes, including my mom!) is still on the Rainforest Cafe side of the street at the edge of the gift shop, waving and crying out to me, whatever it took to get their little Hannah back to safety. Okay, probably not all that dramatic. But I did cry when I realized that I was about to walk away from my family and join this random woman’s life. And the moral of the story is keep your children close.