My mom was not an animal lover. I finally talked her into letting me get a cat when I was in 8th or 9th grade. She hated it. She couldn’t stand it when Ginger would rub up against her legs. As an adolescent, it was quite fun to watch. Adolescents are wicked creatures.
In the summer between junior and senior year of high school, my best friend fled the abuse at her home and came to live with us. Mom loved kids and adopted all my friends as her own. Sherry had a job and I was the driver. We got into all kinds of trouble like blowing the muffler off the car pretending it was a glass pack on a tricked out race car, or getting stuck in the mud out a back road, or….well, you get the picture. Mom went grey young for a reason. Anyway, nothing got us in as much trouble as the monkey incident.
Monday’s post mentioned my bike coming from Monkey Wards and it reminded me of this story. My foster sister and I had been out riding around on a Friday night after school and stopped in Montgomery Wards just before they closed. For some reason, there was a monkey in a cage in the west entrance of the store and we had been stopping in frequently to visit it. It was the cutest little thing…just like the little organ grinder monkeys of long ago and we loved It. Well, this particular Friday, my “sister” had just gotten her paycheck. The monkey was $150. Her check was $153. What girl doesn’t need a monkey, right? So, we bought it, put the cage in the back seat, and cruised. Along about curfew time, we began to worry about how we were going to explain the monkey. Do we flat out tell her? Do we just walk in with it and give her a heart attack? We were adolescents…of COURSE we opted for the heart attack!
I’m not sure I can adequately describe the sound that came out of my mother when she first caught sight of our new little friend. Somewhere between sitting in the chair and standing on the kitchen counter, there was total chaos in the kitchen. Mom freaked out. Which in turn freaked out the monkey whose instinct was to climb…high and fast. In an instant, the monkey climbed up my “sister”, jumped to the top of the fridge and sat there…screaming. Seriously, I was frightened for my life when my mother gathered her wits about her. She insisted we take the monkey back immediately. We explained that not only was it approaching midnight and the store was closed, but the manager had told us we could not return the monkey. “All sales are final, Mom. We HAVE to keep it!”
And that’s how I came to spend the night in the car with a monkey.
As soon as the store was open, mom took us back down to Monkey Wards and showed the manager a side of her few had ever seen. It was a sight to behold.
❤
““Then the Lord relented and did not bring on his people the disaster he had threatened.”
Exodus 32:14