I've Been Doin' Some Writin'

So I thought I'd share with you. Although you've probably heard most of this before.

Duck Captains of the Puget Sound: The Adventures of Captain Quack Sparrow, Part I

I used to be a duck tour guide. And by “duck tour” I don't mean escorting naturalists around a pond; I mean driving an amphibious WWII vehicle full of tourists through downtown Seattle while playing cheesy '70's music.

According to my first job performance review, the actual content of my tour was solid. Despite having moved to the city only a few months before, I had picked up the fun facts and historical anecdotes rather quickly. It helped that almost everything important that happened in Seattle history occurred in 1907.

But my personality score was much lower, reflecting a lack of sound effects and props, and I was told in no uncertain terms that I needed to obtain a minimum of three wacky hats before my next tour.

Since the majority of our customers responded favorably to captains wearing mullet wigs and making obvious jokes, you can imagine how much they enjoyed my grudgingly-worn child-size plastic viking helmet and my sarcastic sense of humor. Midwesterners and west coasters love sarcasm. In fact, sometimes I could make it all the way to the waterfront without a single person realizing that maybe that Starbucks we just passed wasn't the only one we'd see on the tour.

But I could hardly blame them; even after just a few months of being out here, my East Coast reflexes began to atrophy. First I lost my ability to cross a street without pedestrian walk signals and soon after I found myself almost unable to converse with my own people. On one tour, when I mentioned that the floating home used in the movie Sleepless in Seattle was purchased by a couple from New Jersey after the filming, I remembered that one of the families on the duck had said they were from New Jersey, so I asked if they knew the couple that bought the house. "Yeah, that's actually why we came out here-- to visit them," the mother said. It took me a whole 2 seconds, enough time to say, "no way, really?" to remember that sarcasm could be a two-way street. It had been so long.

But despite my refusal to adapt my delivery to the tastes of our average customer, I still received occasional positive feedback, even having my comedic talents compared to Ellen Degeneres. Once a woman getting off the tour looked at me and said, "You're funny . . . like Ellen Degeneres." Now I’m definitely not funny, but I am a lesbian, and I think that's what she meant.

But I amused myself and that was what counted. After all, I was the one who had to take my tour four or five times a day. At the end of each hour and a half, I’d pull into the parking lot, and say, airline-style, "On behalf of everyone here at Ride the Ducks, I’d like to thank you for riding with us today. We know you have your choice of amphibious tour providers here in Seattle and we'd like to thank you for choosing Ride the Ducks."