Got Tail?

"How did I end up here?"

That was the question in my mind when I experienced one of those moments during which you step outside yourself and see where you are and what you are doing and you are just plain amazed at the thought of your own existence at that very moment. I think it is in this moment that a person realizes one of two things: 1. They have just made a huge mistake, are screwed, and need to get out of the situation, or 2. They are living life, loving the absurdity of it, and never want to leave that moment.

The latter was the case for me on Friday as I found myself in dank, underground, aquamarine theatre, the smell of popcorn wafting through the air, senior citizens and children fidgeting in their hardwood bench seats, me sitting next to a college friend I hadn't seen in 11 years, cheesy Disneylandesque People Mover music playing in the background, all of us staring at a huge white curtain pocked with holes and tears waiting for the Weeki Wachee Mermaids', 2:30 performance of The Little Mermaid.

At first glance, I thought the whole setup was cheesy and so rundown that it couldn't possibly stay in business much longer. A Californian, through and through, I felt some sense of superiority and disdain mixed with pity for the place. I marveled at the fact that people still paid to come into this 1940's roadside attraction when Disneyworld and Busch Gardens are each an hour away. But then I watched as the audience began to arrive for the show. Little girls in the audience began peering through the holes in the battered curtain, seeing them as windows rather than flaws - eyes wide, faces pressed to the glass, hoping to be the first to spy the mermaids in action. As the tattered curtain rose, the audience was lit by the refraction of sunlight filtered through the pure water in the spring that was before us. Bubbles rose in front of the glass and as they cleared a school of beautiful women with fishtails, hair billowing with the current of the spring, bodies moving in synch, appeared to float from the source of the spring. A voice boomed from the speakers in the theatre as the mermaids mouthed the words to a story of one mermaid's quest for love. As the mermaids performed, real turtles and schools of fish joined in as extras, floating by as the mermaids danced and sang. All the while the audience remained captivated and amused. The show itself, The Little Mermaid, had it all - the beautiful heroine, the handsome prince, the wicked water witch, and the wise turtle friend. It was truly an underwater musical the likes of which Broadway will never know but one that every theater fan should see. We adults sat in our straight-backed seats leaning forward, laughing together, applauding the feats of water aerobics and synchronization, strangers brought together by the pleasantly absurd yet amazingly enchanting scene before us.

When the curtain fell I looked around and saw that everyone in the audience was smiling and I realized that even in our modern age there is something undeniably tantalizing to everyone, children and adults alike, about being in the presence of something real, yet fantastic. For those 30 minutes everyone was six or seven again, remembering dreams and how our imaginations once ran free.

Then the loudspeaker came on and a voice reminded us to pick up our own trash in the theatre otherwise the same ethereal mermaids would appear as regular young women tasked with having to pick up our garbage. With that announcement we were reminded that this rare roadside oddity, a throw-back to the days before Disney, cable television and video games, was on its last legs and struggling to compete in a world in which fantasy and imagination are more cyber than natural. The handful of mermaids, so skilled at underwater performance, were also the maintenance crew and young women who had to earn a living.

This in mind, I weighed the pros and cons of mermaid life: Who wouldn't give up a cubicle for a tail? A morning commute on traffic-congested freeways for a swim through the currents of a natural spring? Like every little girl who peered through the holes in the worn out curtain waiting for the show to start, I too want to be a mermaid when I grow up and stay in that moment in which I wonder how I got there forever.