I’ve gotta admt, several times during my one-month gig as… my little brother’s keeper, this song kept playing in my mind. It was quite popular in 1959, and it had been very popular with me ever since. Even if you’re very young and don’t recognize the name of the band, The Coasters, you are very likely familiar with their signature song “Charlie Brown.”
Anyway, here it is: “Run Red Run.” Hope you enjoy it.
The Coasters are an American rhythm and blues/rock and roll vocal group who had a string of hits in the late 1950s. With hits including “Searchin’“, “Young Blood“, “Poison Ivy“, and “Yakety Yak“, their most memorable songs were written by the songwriting and producing team of Leiber and Stoller.[2] Although the Coasters originated outside of mainstream doo-wop, their records were so frequently imitated that they became an important part of the doo-wop legacy through the 1960s. In 1987, they were the first group inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
The Giz came into our lives some thirty-five years ago in 1989. I may have been forty-three years old at the time, but faced with the sudden prospect of getting a chance to spend some quality personal time with the cutest little monkey you could ever imagine…? Hey, Presto! I was a ten-year-old little boy once again.
And it’s no exaggeration to say that Gizmo turned my life (no, our lives) upside-down in oh so many ways.
First of all, during the first six or seven days of his “visit,” it being February school vacation week, finding adequate time to care for the little twerp wasn’t much of an issue. The vacation had been a key factor in our final decision to take Gizmo on in the first place. However it was also clear from the beginning that Gizmo’s stay would crawl “a few days” into the following week as well, meaning then we’d have to make some serious adjustments. I, Phyllis, and Missy had job obligations with specific times for getting to work, etc. and Chris was a student at Foxcroft Academy. I guess we figured we’d just deal with that when the time came.
Secondly our entire household was turned upside down. Every piece of furniture we cared about, which was all of them, was draped in sheets… ours looked like some home where the occupants had gone abroad for a couple of years after covering everything they owned to keep it dust-free until their return. Only we hadn’t gone abroad.
We were all still living there in what now looked like a furniture morgue. Hell, even the stairs were covered in a two or three tacked down sheets, as it turned out that the white paint on the wooden risers was ancient and had begun to chip off here and there; and little ol’ eagle-eye Gizmo (who, like any baby) wanted to put everything including the paint chips he’d break off straight into his little pie-hole.
Thirdly, didn’t Ol’ Giz just love my stacked stereo components: the receiver, the dual tape-deck, the amp, and the turntable. I mentioned earlier his fascination with movable parts, like buttons, knobs, and levers. Several often-recurring stereo-related occurrences included the following two, and more:
(1) Picture a perfect and blessed moment of peaceful, golden silence; Lyford family sprawled upon their sheet-draped sofa and stuffed chairs, soaking up a well-earned rest from all of their exhausting Gizmo-related exertions; Gizmo at the moment nowhere to be seen; the faraway strains of “Sergeant Peppers Lonely Hearts’ Club Band” suddenly beginning to waft in from the adjacent dining room; all the Lyfords eyebrows simultaneously raised with the immediate understanding that Gizmo has once again just switched on the stereo out there; then, hmmm, a slight increase in the volume and…
(JESUSH. CHRIST!) THE POWER-AMPED VOLUME CRANKING ALL THE WAY UP TO THE MAX… AND ONE SUPER-TERRIFIED CAPUCHIN RUGRAT JUST A-CANNONBALLING THROUGH THE LIVING ROOM FIVE FEET ABOVE THE FLOOR LIKE SOME FLYING SQUIRREL WITH JERICHO-JOSHUA’S BLARING WINDOW- QUAKING TRUMPETS HOT ON THE LITTLE GUY’S TAIL LIKE A FLASH JUNGLE-FIRE! (You’d think he’d learn…)
(2) And secondly… picture this little “Gizmo game”:
Tom, sacked out on the couch, engrossed in Stephen King’s Richard Bachman four-novelette anthology; everything quiet… tooquiet; Gizmo, in his darling little pirate pantaloons, suddenly peering around the living room door; the little twerp then prancing jauntily into the room (skidding to a stop at a safe distance with arms held high to sportingly taunt Tom with the small object he was holding in both hands); Tom, duly eyeballing; Tom then ejecting himself up and off the couch with a roar; Gizmo, now a.k.a. the Looney Toons’ Roadrunner (mbeep mbeep!) having already rocketed off and away with Tom, his personal Wile E. Coyote, lumbering behind in his dust! in cold pursuit!
And that object? What was the precious little object that sent Tom barreling off on his fool’s errand of trying to tackle the little brat? Why, only one of his 500+ collected cassette tapes is all. And the one he’d just pilfered might have been Tom’s most sacred-of-all-time The Best of Leonard Cohen. Or perhaps his equally sacred Bob Dylan’s Bringing It All Back Home. It could have been his James Taylor’s Sweet Baby James. But it really didn’t matter if it were his prized Ricky Nelson’s Garden Party, Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young’s Déjà Vu, The Stones’ 12 X 5, Johnny Cash’s 1964 I Walk the Line, 1972’s Doctor Hook, or even Dr. Demento Presents the Greatest Novelty Records of All Time, Volume II. Tom had spent a lifetime up until that week in February, 1989 meticulously collecting each and every one of those damn titles, first on 33 1/3 vinyl LP’s and then all over once again on cassette tapes! It was his damn collection and each one of those cassettes was one of his hard-earned possessions.
All of his cassettes were sacred!
Now you might be saying to yourself, OK, but so what, Lyford? You’d get it back from Gizmo eventually, right?
No. NOT right! What you don’t understand is this: as Gizmo would run away with one of Tom’s tapes, as he did often, he’d deftly pinch up an inch or so of the strip of that shiny brown celluloid tape and start unspooling it! Yes! Imagine that! Just like some crazy cat in the bathroom completely and irritatingly unrolling an entire roll of Charmin off the dispenser for fun! There’s be Gizmo up ahead with the already-long, ever-lengthening loop of tape in his wake as they rounded corners through every downstairs room in the house! And what could Tom do about it?
NOTHING! The Giz was just too fast, too wily! All Tom could do was give up eventually, sit in the living room, and wait for an hour to pass for Giz to grow tired and finally abandon it somewhere. And then later, after Tom finally did retrieve it, you’d find him toiling away at the dining room table with the cassette in his left hand, a #2 pencil in his right, and practically getting carpal tunnel syndrome re-reeling the whole damn tape back inside the plastic cassette once again. And looking as pathetic as some chimpanzee digging ants out of an anthill with only a twig for a tool!
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Oh, the things that can happen when you home’s been turned into a monkey house! One of those things I still feel pretty badly about to this day, by the way.
See, Phyl and I have three children: Missy, the oldest; Kathy; and then Chris, the youngest. Kathy hasn’t been mentioned in this little memoir yet, due to the fact that she wasn’t home with us when Gizmo arrived. Instead, she was a student at Colby College in Waterville, Maine which was still in session. She was, however, due to return home nearer the end of Gizmo’s stay.
And me… I’m the idiot who came up with the this great idea:
Let’s not tell her about Gizmo! Let’s let it be a surprise! She’ll be so excited! It’ll be great!
The reason I was so sure it was a great idea is that, surprisingly, Kathy had a real thing about monkeys and gorilla’s already at this point.
When she’d been a lot younger, I’d read aloud the Michael Crichton’s sci-fi novel, CONGO, to all three of our kids. Although it had a very scary, and almost-Indiana-Jones-type plot, the book had a big impact on Kathy. This is because the story’s heroine, one Karen Ross, is a primatologist working with a female mountain gorilla named Amy, who has been trained to communicate with humans using sign language. (Michael Crichton admitted that his Amy was inspired by the famous Gorilla, Koko, who’d actually been trained to do the same thing.) Anyway, the novel was really inspirational for Kathy, leaving her at a very early age looking up to the likes of Dian Fossey and Jane Goodall, and even talking about considering a possible career in primatology herself.
That’s why I just knew Kathy would be delighted to experience the wonderful surprise of finding a cute little capuchin monkey in her very own home. Everybody loved Gizmo. Everybody! So Kathy was sure go nuts over him.
Finally the day arrived. Kathy came home to find me (for some reason) grinning like an idiot, I’m sure. (Wait, did I only say like an idiot?) She came shuffling in through the kitchen carrying a little luggage, passed through the dining room, and headed straight for the living room staircase that leads up to our second-floor bedrooms. Unbeknown to our daughter, Gizmo was perched on the stairs above her. I remember him looking like a silly little jailbird up there, peering down upon her through the railings as if through the bars of his jail cell.
I also remember me holding my breath for the big surprise when she’d see him and possible break down in tears of joy, saying something like, “Oh my God, we have a monkey? And look! Why, he’s so cute!” It was a beautiful scene. In my MIND, that is. (My dumb bunny mind.)
Reality? She screamed in terror! Something big and alive had just landed on her head! Probably it felt to her like an 8-pound spider in her hair. Her hands flew to her head! She muckled hard, violently gripped whatever it was, and started trying to yank it free!
Problem? To Gizmo it felt like he was the one under attack! He too was terrified! So he did what animals do when attacked. He sunk his two canines (Dracula fangs) into the back of Kathy’s hand! (Yeah. That’s what he did.) She screamed, of course! He screamed! We all screamed! It was a train wreck! My train wreck.
And when it was over, Kathy was hurt! Infuriated! Livid!Mad as a wet hen! And she immediately crossed Primatology right off her future career dreams list. Just. Like. That. Monkey? Monkey not good! Monkey, bad!Dad? Dad, bad as well. Dad, not good!
So, Iapparently that was day-one of Kathy beginning to switch “majors.” Kathy, no longer the primatologist. Kathy, the future chemist. Dad, in the dog house.
The whole thing made me so sad. And rightfully feeling guilty.
And Gizmo? How did Gizmo feel? Oh, he was pretty much over it in a half a minute. I’m pretty sure that from his point of view, he was like, “Jeez. What’s her problem? I mean, OK, I jumped on her head. What’s the big deal? That’s what I do. That’s how you get around. That’s how you meet people. And heads? They’re like stepping stones for crossing a brook anyway, right? Come on. I mean they’re there, aren’t they. Might as well use’em. And hey, that’s how I met Tom Lyford, right? And look how well that’s turned out. Well, other than him slamming my tail in the door…”
My brother Dennis is a photographer. When he learned we had a monkey, he asked if he could come over and do some videotaping. I said, “Sure. Why not?” So he came over. And while he was getting his video-camera out of its carrying case and set up, I pointed out Gizmo way over in the living room on the floor “wrestling” vigorously with Chris. But by the time Dennis had the cam up on his shoulder and was ready to shoot, Gizmo had spotted him! A stranger in the house! Someone new to get to know! So the little guy had already bounded through the dining room and had launched himself in a leap heading for Dennis’s head. Honestly, Dennis caught him in his lensas a head-on shot of the little Superman incoming, and only microseconds from impact!
The resulting video was hilarious. There’s the split-second HERECOMES GIZMO! and then for six or sevens seconds Dennis, not accustomed to wearing a live monkey hat, instinctively began to spin wildly around, the resulting video becoming a blurred ride on the Tilt-a-Whirl at the County fair! You almost needed a Dramamine to watch it.
But yeah, heads
Heads were the preferred Gizmo way of saying how do ya do?
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
OK. This little piece was supposed to have been the epilogue, but… damnit, apparently it’s not. There was a little too much to cover. So once more I must say, once again, “Gee Whiz, be sure to stay tuned for Chapter Six, The Epilogue, coming soon to the screen on your preferred device!”
(And yes, I know I said last time that Chapter Two was going to be called “Tweeter and the Monkeyman,” but it turns out that MAYBE that’s going to be the title of Chatper Three instead. (Or four?) My apologies.)
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(But previously, Chapter One ended with …) “It seems she had to go to California for a week, and was at a loss as to what she was going to do about Gizmo. So yeah, you can see where this is going. Soon I was running like a 43-yearold little kid to Phyllis, my darling wife, begging her “Please, please, PLEASE! Can I? Come on, huh? I’ll feed’im, I’ll change his diapers, why… you won’t hafta do a thing, I PROMISE!”
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
OK. See, the reason I felt I had to dramatically beg like a little kid to be Gizmo’s babysitter is that Phyllis suffers from a lifelong aversion to animals. Hairy mammals especially. (However, she does strive valiantly to make an exception for me). Cats and dogs were anathema to her. Me, I passionately love cats and dogs. I love pretty much all animals.
Except bears.
So anyway, I instinctively I knew that a hairy baby-monkey-mammal was way too close to being a cat or a dog. So I knew my chances were slim at best. However… my acting like the pathetically hopeful eight-year-old begging for the puppy that had followed him home, or the bunny rabbit, or especially even the pony, might in fact, just might prove to be too overwhelmingly disarming. And if I could just get her to crack a grin, that just might be the chink in her armor I could use to get her flustered and off-guard.
Especially considering it was my plan to purposely perform my little comedy act with Phyllis in front of a random audience of YMCA members standing in the lobby. Who, by the way (yes!) ended up thinking it sufficiently “cute” to begin chanting at her in a chorus of, “Aw, come on, Phyllis,” and “Let the poor kid have his monkey,” etc. (See, I’ve had a lot of practice learning how to manipulate this woman.)
And hah! She did crack a grin (immediately wishing she hadn’t). Peer pressure is a marvelous tool. Her defense momentarily collapsed. I was in!
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
SO… a few weeks later, as a way to get Gizmo to feel more familiar with and closer to us, his future one-week monkey-sitters, Phyl and I were invited to a getting-to-know-you-better evening chez Gizmo. Giz was so excited to have company visit. Phyllis positioned herself on the sidelines, wanting to distance herself from the action and just passively watch me having a ball rolling around on the floor with him. I say “wanting to distance herself” because it was impossible for anyone to distance themselves from that frisky little ball of energy.
Gizmo had a super power. He could sense fear from a mile away and he was compelled to hone right in on it. In the future I’d see it time and time again. Those who fearfully tried to avoid the wild little simian were always the very people Gizmo was drawn to the most. Immediately, Phyllis sensed that she was a target, like her lap had the big Gizmo bullseye on it. That’s where he wanted to sit.
And strangely Phyl, who wanted nothing whatsoever to do with any pets of the animal variety, had always turned out to be a frickin’ animal magnet. We’d be in a room with some dog and I’d be calling, “Here, fella!” or “Over here, girl!” and Phyl would end up with the dog at her knees. And cats?Just the same. They’d be rubbing against her ankles all night long. Me? I’d be only too happy to run defense for her. Because I wanted all that attention all for myself.
Looking around, I discovered there was another “monkey house” at their home as well, identical to the one at the Y. And this monstrosity would soon be trucked over to our house when Sandy and her husband, Brian, flew off to the west coast for a week. I couldn’t wait.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Gizmo and his monkey house arrived at our house at 7:30 pm on February 16th, 1989. There were four of us waiting to answer the door: Phyllis and I, plus our daughter, Melissa, and our son, Chris. The temperature outside was +6 degrees Fahrneheit. If you’re wondering how I still know the exact date, time, and temperature, I kept a journal. Here’s a picture of the actual front cover.
Sandy and Gizmo waited in our living room, with Gizmo temporarily jailed in his pet carrier (like some cat on his way to the vet’s) while a couple of men muscled his cumbersome “abode” into our den. It was obvious poor little Gizmo, looking so forlorn, knew what was going on. He’d been through such a scenario at least once before, if not more. Home is where the heart is, yeah, but for the Giz home had to be wherever his little “house” went. And now that little house had just been noisily dragged into our strange one.
With our front door finally closed against the frigid temperature outside, the little guy was finally released from his travel carrier. Immediately he scampered right into Sandy’s lap, where he remained cowering, a little squirrel-size ball with sad little frightened eyes. I’m pretty sure the little fella probably felt he himself the orphan who was being ditched once again. It must’ve been very stressful.
And how did I feel? Also stressed. Both excited and scared. I felt like I had when we’d brought four-days-old Missy, our very first-born child, home from the hospital. We didn’t feel confident at all about knowing how to take care of a baby then. But there she was anyway: a little, helpless life lying there in her crib. Sure, we’d been given lots of pointers from people in general and medics, but thank goodness we had that Dr. Spock manual for child care.
Well, here we were again, another little baby getting thrust into our care. Only this one in no sense of the word was helpless. We’d seen him in action. This guy could walk. This guy could swing from the chandeliers if you didn’t watch him. This baby could saddle up your head and ride it to a standstill like a simian Urban Cowboy. But still, he was just a baby, too. In his own way. And there was no Dr. Spock manual for Gizmo.
With Gizmo nestled safely in Sandy’s lap, we gathered round in the solemn, final, how-to demonstrations, not that we hadn’t gone over a lot of it prior to this. We covered what foods he liked, what foods he didn’t like, what foods he must have, and what treats he favored (pretzels and grapes). We were cautioned again that Giz had a blazing curiosity which, coupled with his safe-cracker’s dexterous little fingers, meant lock up what you didn’t want messed with and anything that might be dangerous for the little fella. Because Gizmo could and would get into anything and everything not nailed down: closed drawers, jewelry boxes, cupboards, things with zippers, you name it. I remember that in the days leading up to our little sleep-over friend’s arrival, we had thoroughly monkey-proofed the house. (At least we thought we had.)
Sandy took out the diaper bag and emptied its contents. Among other things, it had a number of diapers, some with pant legs gathered just above the knees and some… pantaloons basically, with pant legs gathered below the knees. The latter made him look like a jaunty little swashbuckling pirate. So cute.
But finally Gizmo was temporarily locked into his seven-foot tall, toy-laden, security-pillowed monkey penthouse, for safe keeping while his foster parents got busy pulling on their heavy coats and shuffling out of sight, out into the kitchen. And sadly, when I watched Gizmo’s little body slump, and that beautiful little mug of his crumple into soft despair when he heard our front door open, then close, and then at last the whole house become so much more silent, I was so wistfully reminded of Shakespeare’s “Parting is such sweet sorrow.”
Yeah, so sorry little fella, they’re gone, aren’t they. And you’re afraid they aren’t ever coming back. Oh, baby, I know, I get it. But hey, you’ve got us. Right? And the thing is, they really are coming back. Trust us, Sweetie. But you and me? We’re gonna have so much fun! Every single day. It’ll be great.
Sandy had instructed us to wait about fifteen minutes or so before releasing him from his little “apartment,” to give him a some time to begin to get used to his new circumstances. A period of adjustment. Then, we could let him play with us to his and our hearts’ delight, which I could barely wait for. Then, when the Cinderella hour (or whenever it was we wanted to go to bed) finally rolled around, we could put him back in for the night. He’d been thoroughly trained to obey the simple command, “Cage,” she told us. “Say that just once and he’ll scamper his little self right back into it for the night,” she said. It was such a relief and blessing to us to have been given a magic word like that, as I was still feeling almost like we had a real human baby in the house again, and without the assurance of a Dr. Spock monkey manual.
When we opened up his door, we found him rocking back and forth nervously and hugging his cute little Garfield pillow. He looked out at us inquiringly for a moment. And then cautiously he hopped out, still with pillow, and continued watching us to see what we were going to do.
When he’d decided we weren’t going to eat him or anything, he was off! Bounding around the house from room to room, stopping here and there to inspect things, and then moving on. Slowly and non-threateningly trailing him, we found his Garfield abandoned on the kitchen floor.
He was hell on wheels! Practically a blur! He had so much to explore, an entire new world. He hopped up onto my desk and grabbed a pencil out of my pens-and-pencils holding mug. He was in the bathroom examining his own little self in the mirror. He was (yikes!) paused in front of my stacked stereo components, already pushing buttons and twisting knobs! He was examining our own toys that we’d laid out for him in anticipation of his arrival.
Me, I laid down on my back on the living room floor, waiting. It didn’t take long. He landed on my stomach just as I’d planned and boy, we went at it, the first of many fun “wrestling matches” to come that would all turn out to be more fun than (dare I say it?)… a barrel of monkeys. We chased him around. He chased us around. We wore him out. He wore us out. A little kid’s dream: I had a monkey!
It was nearing bed time. But we kept putting it off because, damn, it was just too much fun. Eventually however, common sense had to prevail. We were bushed. So… per instructions… I went to his dwelling, opened the door, looked down upon Gizmo, and spoke the magic word. “Cage.”
Giz looked up at me and blinked a few times. Perhaps I hadn’t said it clearly enough. I said it again. “Cage.” We were still looking at each other. Hmmm. OK, one more time, this time with gusto. “CAGE.”
And Gizmo moved immediately. Oh he understood that command alright. That was obvious. But rather than obey it, the little devil took off in the wrong direction, scampering out toward the kitchen! We followed him. And that monkey? He led us round and round in circles, being careful to stay just far enough ahead of us that we couldn’t lay a hand on him. We were a little parade, with Gizmo leading as the grand little marshall. Stupidly, Phyllis, son Chris, daughter Melissa, and I were bringing up the rear, chanting the now obviously ineffectual “Cage!” over and over in vain, thereby proving the time-worn definition of insanity. It had become a game for him, catch as catch can. And that twerp was so slippery and so evasive, our attempts at “heading him off at the pass” were just exercises in futility.
Eventually though, I was able to snag him. And feeling a little badly for the little critter as he and I approached his bungalow, I repeatedly assured him in a soothing voice, “Hey there little man, everything’s OK. Alright? It’s just that it’s time for bed. You’re worn out. I’m worn out. We’re all worn out. So what’re you gonna do, huh? But just think: tomorrow we’ll have an entire full day together. We’ll let you out and you’ll have the run of the house again. It’ll be great. Just a hoot.” And by the end of this babbling I was standing directly in front of the cage door.
I asked Phyl to open the door for me, so I could keep both hands firmly clamped on the inmate. As she did so, I could feel him tense all up, readying himself to spring for the great escape. I however was determined that that wasn’t about to happen. So I positioned him quite a ways inside, to give me a little wiggle room, because I had a feeling that as soon as I let go of him to close the frickin’ door, he’d bolt. So I held him in place a little longer, all the while reassuring him in soothing baby-talk that everything was OK. And then, on the silent count of three, I let go, backed away, and slammed the door fast!
There! I had him! Finally! But as I was fumbling with the lock, Gizmo let loose with a shrill wail! Oh, the poor little bugger, I thought as I leaned hard against the door to be sure to keep it closed. He misses Sandy and Brian so damn much. And who can blame him? I sure couldn’t. But then the wail increased in volume, becoming a piercing yowl that was honestly quite close to deafening. So I began showering him with earnest promises about what tomorrow would bring us, and how his loved ones honestly would return. Someday soon! But me, always the empath, I could imagine and feel his stark loneliness as clearly as if it were me there in that cage, locked away. But jeez, the heart-rending lamenting still hadn’t stopped! It had, in fact, gone up another notch.
By now my heart had started pounding in my chest.! I was sweating! I could barely even hear any more! And I could barely think straight! I mean, what the heck was wrong? What was I supposed to do? What could do? I hated to admit it, but I’d begun to suspect I had obviously bitten off more than I could chew this time, with this monkey-sitting gig…
“Come on low, little buddy. This’ll all be…”
What? Somebody’s hand was suddenly squeezing and jerking my shoulder from behind. Hard!What the…? Now, that was just one more distraction I didn’t want or need right then. I was busy! I was under duress! So I shrugged the damn hand off me! And…
My God, I was thinking, won’t this guy EVER calm the heck back down, for crying out loud? I mean, what’ve I gotta DO? I was going stir-crazy! Certifiably NUTS!
WHAT damnit it!” I bellowed.
And then, if things weren’t crazy enough, somebody started pounding me in the back with their fist! Equally as hard!WHAT? And amid all THIS? This was a freaking nightmare! I was just about stone deaf! I was at my wit’s end, and I was entering full panic mode for Christ’s sake, if I weren’t there already! So I spun around viciously, ready to start screaming myself and maybe biting somebody’s head off to boot!
Whoa…! There were three wild-eyed faces all gawking at me like I was crazy or something! And I could tell they were talking at me because I could see their lips moving, but in all the racket I couldn’t make out heads or tails of whatever it was they were yelling!
“OK,WHAT!? What the freakin’ heck do you WANT? Can’t you see what I’m…”
Suddenly, I noticed all three were pointing their index fingers, not at me, but at something… downward! They were pointing at something they urgently wanted me to see!
Insanely confused in all this madness by now, all I wanted to do was run away to some place quiet! But no– so with my angriest angry glare I decided to humor them, damnit, and finally look down! Just to get them off my back!
And then…
OH NO…
I saw it.
It was something… something down at the bottom of Gizmo’s door.
A little stub of… shit! Gizmo’s tail, just the tip of it, protruding out from under the door!
Oh. My. God! What had I done?!
Of course what I had done was accidentally slam the door on… poor little Gizmo’s tail!No wonder he…
I couldn’t believe it! I didn’t want to believe it, damn me all to hell!
I immediately yanked the door open a couple of inches. The tip of the tail zipped right inside, out of view. And likewise immediately… the pain-wracked caterwauling mercifully ceased!
I was instantly consumed with shame and self-hatred. It had been done accidentally, of course, but try to explain that to the baby Capuchin with the sore tail!
I looked to him and found his eyes boring two holes into mine. Standing there on two hind legs shoulder-width apart, and holding the tip of the assaulted tail up in his left fist at head height, like one might hold a torch, he was confronting me with the evidence, the evidence of my betrayal. Because surely, that must have been what it had to be feeling like to him.
Oh yes, oh yes oh yes! What in God’s name had I done!? I was having all I could do to keep from collapsing in anguish. I mean, the last thing in the world I’d ever wanted to ever do was…
“Oh Gizmo, I’m so sorry, so sorry, so sorry!” I blurted out, on the edge of tears. How could I ever make him trust me again?
Yeah. Way to go, Tom. Way to totally destroy an otherwise wonderfully perfect evening. Or week…
I had no doubts whatsoever that it wouldn’t be me putting the little man to bed tomorrow night. Or perhaps any night. No. I definitely got it that he’d never allow himself to get anywhere near both me and the tail-trap door at the same time any time soon, not even with a ten-foot pole.
Throughout my life, I’ve been one of those guys to whom things just seem to… happen. I mean, right out of the blue. Unxpected things. And sometimes even rather outlandish things. Why? Because Life is The Joker, the Grand Comedian. Because Life seems to find it fun, having its way with me. Today, I’m hell-bent on sharing with you a sample of of one of those things…
CHAPTER ONE: WELCOME TO THE MONKEY HOUSE
I was still in pretty good shape at 43. Big into push-ups, pull-ups, sit-ups, running, and even doing a little weight-lifting. This was back in ’89.
(And so man oh man, when and why did I ever let myself go like I have?)
Anyway, ’89 was the year my wife, Phyllis, and I got memberships to the Y and added a daily morning swim to our routines. I remember getting up so damn early, long before breakfast, and doing those laps: back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. A somewhat boring regimen, sure, but it did feel great in the long run, pushing the envelope by adding on a couple of extra laps every week or two. Plus, it seemed to be having a pretty positive effect on my attitude and general outlook. And that was great.
Ah, to be young again…
(Oh wait— yeah, now I remember why! I was forgetting about the ‘GETTING OLD’ part. I’m 77 now. It must’ve been somewhere between 43 and 77 that I let it happen. So I guess maybe I can lay at least part of the blame for my slacking off on all the arthritis, surgeries, and all that other geriatric medical yadda yadda yadda.)
But I digress. So anyway, we’d show up at the Y half-asleep, zombie-shuffling in, barely aware of our surroundings. Speaking for myself at least, I know I was pretty much flying on autopilot those mornings, barely alert enough to swap the nominal good-mornings with the friendly staff on our way to the locker rooms. Basically sleep walking. That’s just the way it always was. So yeah, no wonder I was taken totally by surprise when…
wait for it…
A MONKEY literally (notfiguratively) crash-landed down onto my head like a little sandbag?
I mean, who wouldn’t be?! I was like, I dunno, did somebody slip me an LSD mickey when I wasn’t looking? I didn’t have clue-number-one what the hell the thing even was. I mean come on, it was the Y! Not the frickin’ jungle!
So I went a little berserk, didn’t I. And by berserk, I’m talking about emitting one long, not-so-very-macho wail; pirouetting round and round; and all the while, clawing and batting away at the very alive Davy Crockett coonskin cap I thought was trying to burrow into my brain! I mean you know, I had seen Alien with all those creepy giant eggs just waiting to hatch one of those flying face-huggers at you! But a flying monkey?! Shades of The Wizard of Oz!
Mercifully, I was rescued by one of the staff ladies who leapt out of her chair, stopped me mid-spin, and carefully began extricating the four little limbs and long tail of what turned out to be an eight-month-old, baby Capuchin monkey! What the hell was a monkey doing at the Y?
Turns out what the monkey was doing at the Y was this:
The staff lady, Sandy, was keeping him with her during her workdays because reliable monkey-sitters were impossible to find. He, Gizmo, was totally under her care. Not as a pet per se, but as part of the national non-profit foundation, Monkey Helpers for the Disabled, Inc. (now known as Envisioning Access). Their motto: “Meet a monkey. Adopt a monkey.” So Sandy had “adopted” a monkey. Gizmo.
The “adoption” wouldn’t be permanent, however. It would only last for three years, after which he would be returned to the foundation to begin his actual training which would last many years. Sandy’s job, in the meantime, was to give him a home, bring him up from babyhood, and train him to be not only accustomed to people but be safe and people-friendly (think user-friendly).
I hadn’t noticed it at the time but when I came to, there it was, standing tall right there in front of me in the Y office like some huge, wooden, open-faced armoire. But I guess “kennel” would be a more accurate term for it. It was huge and roomy, seven-feet tall and at least five-feet wide— and so much more than just a simple “cage’” even though of course a cage it was. It was obviously Gizmo’s living quarters/play pen. Inside there were roped rings hanging down for swinging on, soft bedding, an assortment of toys, and what I came later to call his soft security pillows, one looking like Garfield and the other looking like a mother hen.
Turned out Gizmo was only seven months old, a baby. And after my fear-induced adrenalin rush had worn off, I began to see him as the cutest little head-hugger I could ever imagine laying eyes on. He was undeniably adorable.
And after a few minutes of getting to ‘know” him, I have to admit it was practically a case of love at first sight for me. (And it wasn’t just me. As I was soon to find out, everybody who came into contact with the little guy fell head over heels in love with him too.) But admit it. What child at some point hasn’t wanted a monkey? They always look like such fun, in the movies and on television. And OK, granted, I was no longer a child. But of course I’d fantasized about having one as a kid.
And isn’t there always a little inner-self kid left over somewhere inside each of us after we’ve aged? So I was a child at heart.
So guess what. I swam a lot fewer laps in the pool that morning. Seems Gizmo had taken to me as much as I had taken to him. And that felt so special. (Of course, Gizmo simply loved people. All of us, in fact. Of course I just preferred to think that what he and I were building was an extra-special relationship. But…)
So yeah, it took me about twenty minutes to pull myself away from him and trudge myself off to the pool.
Next morning went exactly the same way. And ditto for the morning after. Not swimming was suddenly threatening to put a dent in my physical regimen. But as far as I was concerned, who cared? Not me. The joy that I was getting playing with hat little rascal was so addictive.
Then, some mornings I didn’t swim at all. Hell, some mornings I didn’t even bother to bring my swimming trunks. What a loser I was becoming. But what a happy loser. Because just like they appear on TV and in the movies, monkeys really are a lot of fun.
OK. So let’s do the long-story-short thing:
Gizmo’s and my rapport seemed to really be pleasing Sandy. To the point where she took me aside one morning and offered me a proposition that would (temporarily at least) change my life. It seems she had to attend a conference in California for a week, and was at a loss as to what she was going to do about Gizmo.
So yeah, you can probably see where this was going. Soon I was running like a 43-year old little kid to Phyllis, my darling wife, begging “Please, please, PLEASE! Can I? Huh? Come on, huh? I’ll feed’im, I’ll change his diapers… why, you won’t hafta do a thing! I PROMISE!”
(Stay tuned for Chapter 2: “TWEETER AND THE MONKEYMAN”)
NEARING THE END OF THE LINE 