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Back in the early 1970s, my family was living in Columbus, Ga. This was your typical suburban neighborhood. I was about seven years old at the time, and my brother was about 16 months younger than me. We were both obsessed with apes and monkeys. We watched all of the wild life programs. We had every sort of monkey toy imaginable, pictures of monkeys, framed and hanging on our bedroom walls. As my mom used to say, we had "monkeys on the brain".
One summer day, my brother and I were alone in our back yard. We looked up from our sandbox to see a small monkey running along the redwood fence that separated our property from the neighbor's. We just looked at each other in utter disbelief...there was an honest to god monkey in the yard.
We ran into the house as fast as our feet would take us, screaming at the top of our lungs, "Mama, Mama, there's a monkey in the yard! Hurry, come and see!". By the time we all got back outside, the monkey was nowhere to be seen. It was as if it had vanished into thin air. My mom thought we were pulling a prank, she just sort of brushed us off and told us she was too busy to play these sorts of games with us.
Over the coming days and weeks, this scenario repeated itself several times, always with similar results. Neither of my parents ever saw the monkey, and it was becoming obvious to my brother and me that they were losing their patience with the both of us. We were given the speech about how having an imagination was a wonderful thing, but that it was important for us to understand the difference between fantasy and reality.
In time, we would barely even acknowledge our furry little visitor. He had caused us nothing but problems from day one. On those increasingly rare occasions when he'd appear, we would only glance up at him momentarily from where we were playing, then simply return to whatever we were doing. It seemed like a cruel joke that the little monkey would never show himself while our parents were outside with us. It was as if he were teasing us. In our own childlike way, we came to resent the little guy.
Then one Sunday morning, while my brother and I were finishing our breakfast, my dad stepped out on the back patio to finish his cup of coffee and smoke a cigarette. He had only been outside a few moments when he returned to the kitchen with a look on his face like I had never seen before. He looked at my mother while gesturing over his shoulder toward the back patio. He seemed almost speechless at first, but somehow managed to exclaim, "You're never going to believe this, but there's a damn monkey in the back yard".
And there was.
One summer day, my brother and I were alone in our back yard. We looked up from our sandbox to see a small monkey running along the redwood fence that separated our property from the neighbor's. We just looked at each other in utter disbelief...there was an honest to god monkey in the yard.
We ran into the house as fast as our feet would take us, screaming at the top of our lungs, "Mama, Mama, there's a monkey in the yard! Hurry, come and see!". By the time we all got back outside, the monkey was nowhere to be seen. It was as if it had vanished into thin air. My mom thought we were pulling a prank, she just sort of brushed us off and told us she was too busy to play these sorts of games with us.
Over the coming days and weeks, this scenario repeated itself several times, always with similar results. Neither of my parents ever saw the monkey, and it was becoming obvious to my brother and me that they were losing their patience with the both of us. We were given the speech about how having an imagination was a wonderful thing, but that it was important for us to understand the difference between fantasy and reality.
In time, we would barely even acknowledge our furry little visitor. He had caused us nothing but problems from day one. On those increasingly rare occasions when he'd appear, we would only glance up at him momentarily from where we were playing, then simply return to whatever we were doing. It seemed like a cruel joke that the little monkey would never show himself while our parents were outside with us. It was as if he were teasing us. In our own childlike way, we came to resent the little guy.
Then one Sunday morning, while my brother and I were finishing our breakfast, my dad stepped out on the back patio to finish his cup of coffee and smoke a cigarette. He had only been outside a few moments when he returned to the kitchen with a look on his face like I had never seen before. He looked at my mother while gesturing over his shoulder toward the back patio. He seemed almost speechless at first, but somehow managed to exclaim, "You're never going to believe this, but there's a damn monkey in the back yard".
And there was.
ANYTHING
-Tallahassee 
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