One hot summer Saturday when I was in late elementary school, I was helping my dad wash our cars in the driveway. Picture late 1970s suburbia in southern Oklahoma.
All of a sudden—completely out of nowhere—a spider monkey appeared on the street and came barreling right towards me. As I watched in stunned horror, it wrapped itself around my leg—and stayed there.
Now, we lived on the edge of the prairie, so I was used to snakes and tarantulas. Monkeys, not so much. And, as quite a small person, that monkey took up a lot of the real estate of my appendage. Worse, it didn’t seem to be going anywhere but just clung tightly there.
I knew that I needed to keep my composure to make sure it didn’t get agitated or hurt me. So, summoning up the calmest voice I could, I called out softly: “Daddy, there’s a monkey on my leg.”
I’ll never forget my father’s face as he came around from the front of the car.
He stood there, frozen, not wanting to distress the monkey either. But I could tell he was considering what to do. Not really a parenting challenge one can plan for. We stood looking at each other, contemplating next steps.
What saved us from any further action was our new across-the-street neighbor bounding out of his house. We hadn’t met him yet, but our introduction arrived as he came running and hollering, “Pamba! Bad monkey!” He was a young, tall, bachelor doctor, who went on frequent medical missions to remote parts of the world—he had thought it would be a fun idea to adopt said monkey. In all the time we were neighbors, though, it never was very well-behaved (so many more stories!), and on his marriage a few years later, Pamba went to live at an animal sanctuary.
But that summer day, he detached the monkey from my leg, apologized and introduced himself, and began a lifelong friendship with my parents. My dad still gets a Christmas card from him almost 50 years later.
A few years ago, when I told this story to a friend, she laughed at my crazy, eventful childhood.
“Well,” I said, “it had sort of happened before.” And I proceeded to tell her about when we lived in Albuquerque in the early 1970s. When I was five, some people in our neighborhood had a pet chimpanzee who they dressed in a diaper and a little jacket. It was constantly roaming the neighborhood because it had learned how to open the outside door.
You can imagine the rest: one afternoon, my mother was in the kitchen fixing dinner, and my younger brother and I were in the living room watching Mr Rogers’ Neighborhood. When my mother came out to check on us, who was sitting in a row with us and enjoying the program, but our neighborhood chimp? Letting itself in through our front door, it was perfectly well-behaved. We hadn’t said a thing because it certainly wasn’t bothering my brother or me. After all, we didn’t get to watch too much TV, so we weren’t going to kick up a fuss when it was just being companionable.
My mother’s reaction was priceless: she came in, witnessed the spectacle, and immediately turned back on her heel into the kitchen. Soon after, I heard her on the phone, saying quite insistently: “Please come and get your monkey!”
At this, my friend positively chortled.
“I mean—my mom was pretty funny in the situation,” I responded.
“No,” she said, “I think it’s hilarious that you have TWO monkey stories. Who has even one?” (This, dear reader, had never occurred to me.)
But here’s the thing: you never do know how many monkey stories somebody has. It’s what I like about what we have going here at Reformed Journal: we’re a surprising bunch. From one day to the next, you can never predict who you might meet, what you might learn, where you might get to travel through words.
And the bigger we grow—the more voices we add—the more surprising every day becomes. That’s amazing.
I’ve been around Reformed Journal for a long time now—over twenty years. I’m so glad there’s a place in the world for my monkeying about in my occasional essays. I can’t think of many (any?) venues that allow for the variety of topics and genres and perspectives that we do. And I’m grateful for the other writers who make up this community and who enlarge my world.
That community, of course, wouldn’t be complete without all of you readers. I’m so thankful for each of you who gives us the gift of your time every day. That’s an absolute honor in a world where attention is short, and time ever dear. Please know you have my gratitude.
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Spider monkey photo by Tarryn Grignet on Unsplash
One Response
Thank you, Jennifer. Two monkey stories indeed. Our distant cousins must have a thing for your family.
This isn’t much of a story, but my when we lived in Guatemala, my wife’s sister and family had a female monkey called, fittingly, Mona Lisa. Lovers of the language will play with words.