As I recall, there were about eight
to ten large hostile gorillas surrounding us.
There were some stationed outside each wall of the white one-room
schoolhouse. I felt intense fear, and I knew there was no escaping them. This was one of those vivid childhood dreams
that sticks with you for the long haul.
I remember meeting people in my life
that loved monkeys, collected monkey stuffed animals, or just thought they were
so cute. I recall thinking that was not the case for me and that any sort of
primate made me uneasy. I did not
particularly desire to visit the monkey exhibit at the zoo, and I never saw the
movie “Congo” nor preferred to study Jane Goodall.
As an adult, I went ahead and
claimed it as a fear. It gave my
students a laugh, and it entertained my peers at gatherings where I had to give
the three fun facts about myself. It has
provided some good-natured fun throughout the years, however I tested out this
fear at the zoo a few years ago. Yes,
the fear still exists. When I saw a
rather large stringy-haired orangutan at the zoo, my entire body
shuddered. This fear hasn’t been helped
by horror stories I’ve heard about unfortunate primate owners who were attacked
by their pets or about the stories on the news of children falling in the
gorilla cage at the zoo.
Coworkers and students have enjoyed
posting the occasional monkey picture in my office throughout the years, all in
the name of a good laugh. However, one
particular monkey story is my favorite.
It takes place back in graduate school.
I was a student worker, grading papers to help with my tuition. There was a table in a cramped materials
closet where graduate students could gather therapy materials for speech therapy
sessions. Robert (we will call him), my
fellow classmate was waiting for a few minutes for a therapy room to open for
his next session. I was trying to
concentrate and get work done, but Robert, our class clown, would have none of
it.
After several silly attempts to make
me laugh, he grabbed an old dirty sock monkey off the shelf and made it talk to
me. “I’m scared of monkeys,” I said in a
serious tone, and this time it was his turn to laugh. The next day that pesky monkey showed up in
my cubby in the workroom down the hall.
Two days later, he was in my lunch box.
Robert was giddy with his new pranking hobby.
The next week on one particular day,
I knew something must be in the works. I
had passed by Robert several times that day, and he just giggled and quickly
passed by me. That evening I was headed
to a nigh class, and Robert passed by me in the hallway of our department. He looked as though he would explode, and his
lips burst apart with this confession, “Susan, the sock monkey is buckled in
the passenger seat of your car. I got
your car keys from your roommate earlier today!” He was so excited about this one, he couldn’t
even wait for me to discover it!
Years later, the sock monkey arrived
in a box on my birthday. I was living
back in my home state, and it was so funny to see that ratty old sock monkey
again. I passed the sock monkey to
another fellow graduate, and we discussed passing it around to other classmates
for laughs. We lost track, and I’m not
sure who has the sock monkey now or if he found his way home to the
university. It is a fun memory, and I’m
thankful we found ways to laugh during a serious and stressful time in graduate
school. And no, that did not get me over
my fear of primates, and no, please don’t send me any—stuffed or real.
