People Aren't Monkeys, Apparently (Part 2 of 2)

In my previous post, I told a story of a little girl who was very misunderstood when she asked her classmate to stop behaving like a monkey. Now I will tell a story of a very misunderstood young adult in a similar situation.

In the summer of 2007, when I was nineteen, my father got remarried. The wedding reception was held in a beautiful local park. There was a playground right by the pavilion where the food was served so the children were having more fun than children generally have at weddings. I brought my roommate, Kate, as my “plus one” since I didn’t know many people there and was single at the time. She and I ended up on the playground reveling with my new step-cousins. I need to back up for a second and explain that I have very few biological relatives. I have one cousin (who is an orphan), one estranged grandmother, and possibly a great aunt or something.  The trouble is, they are all in Belarus, which is the country where I was born and from which my parents escaped when I was 2 years old, never to return. So I don’t know any of those relatives and we don’t speak the same language anyway. The point is, I grew up without relatives other than my parents, and all of a sudden, thanks to my new stepmother, I had aunts, uncles, and cousins.

So there I am, on a playground with my friend and my little cousins, having a blast. One of the boys (about 5 or 6 years old) was incredibly energetic and shockingly skilled at going across the monkey bars. Kate and I marveled at his speed and upper body strength, and this kid was soaking up all the attention and beaming with pride. As he climbed all over the playground and zoomed across the monkey bars, he shouted, “I’m a monkey! Look! I’m a monkey!” and Kate and I cheered him on. He even started climbing some small trees nearby to further prove his monkey-like skills.

Another thing I ought to explain is that there were several children and in the chaos I didn’t catch their names (I was literally introduced to 100 people that day). So the jungle-gym king was simply known as “monkey boy”.

When Kate and I rejoined the adults in the pavilion, I started small-talking with one of my new uncles, the father of the playful, tree-climbing enthusiast. I told him how impressed I was with his son, the “monkey boy”, and what a lovely time I had playing with him on the playground. Well, suffice it to say, that man gave me an earful. I couldn’t believe someone I’d just met could be so offended and angry with me!

“My son is not a monkey!” He spat. “I can’t believe you would say such a thing! He is a very special boy and just because he is different, that does not give you or anyone else the right to call him nasty names!” After several similar statements, I eventually closed my mouth, which was agape in astonishment, and walked away to tell my friend about the strange encounter.

We tried to figure out what made him fly off the handle, and the only thing we could come up with was that my uncle didn’t hear me when I explained that his son was climbing trees and monkey bars, making monkey noises, and repeatedly shouting “I’m a monkey!”

I finally told my dad and stepmom about it, just in case my uncle told them first and painted the picture all wrong. They wanted to know what the little boy’s name was but I couldn’t remember. Then they explained that his son was mentally handicapped, which confused me because I was certain he was not. 

I think it took several conversations like this where I adamantly disagreed that the boy on the playground had any disabilities before a lightbulb went on in someone’s head. My uncle has several sons. For some reason, everyone assumed I was talking about a different one.  

The whole thing was so ludicrous that all we could do when the misunderstanding was cleared up was laugh. The moral of the story is that you should never call someone a monkey, even when they are claiming to be one.  I probably should have learned this lesson the first time someone got the wrong idea about what being a monkey meant, but I thought surely there would be no harm in saying that a little white boy, who was climbing trees and saying, “Ooh ooh, aah aah!” like an orangutan, was being a cute monkey. Well, I was wrong.

So please, do not, under any circumstances, say that someone (regardless of age, race, or number of siblings with disabilities) resembles or is behaving like a monkey or any non-human primate species!