Maybe my best day of my childhood was the day my “uncle” gave me a monkey. The “uncle” in question was an “uncle” not ‘cos my moms be hookin’ or anything like that, but since he was a relative of a cousin of an uncle, twice removed, once adopted or something along those lines. For some reason my mother felt the need (and still does) to stress this every time he’s mentioned, as if a 5-year-old would be asking him for a kidney or something.
Anyway, he was delightful as far as I recall, but he could have been Charles Manson for all I cared, because the man always turned up with at least one big bag FULL of sweets – and not just any sweets - English sweets. They had the same look, smell and names as ours, but I liked to think they tasted different; more worldly somehow. The first time I saw a blue Smartie was the day I knew the world had more to offer than TK red lemonade and Tayto.
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| It's a miracle I still have all my own teeth |
But the year my uncle brought the monkey stands out as being particularly awesome. OK, he was made of chocolate (hadn’t I mentioned that?), but I was at the age where that didn’t really matter – I had MY OWN MONKEY! I named him Terry and swore never to eat him, since we’d quickly become best friends. I have several distinct memories of playing happily with Terry. He was a special guest on my “cookery programme”, wherein I’d make variations on the classic mud pie recipe (his favourite was a grassy mud pie with worm icing as I recall) and end the “show” by flinging the mud pies at the back wall. (Don’t judge - that’s how most shows I watched in the ‘80s ended). Each show was recorded on my Fisher Price recorder, for posterity.
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| Those tapes are still out there somewhere… |
Terry also featured in my version of “mammies and daddies”, where I played the harassed battered wife of a drunken misogynistic jerk (played by kid down the road to much critical acclaim; particularly when our parents found out). My cabbage patch doll played the part of our often-neglected and sometimes abused child (I once tied her to the exhaust pipe of my mother’s Mini), while Terry played the part of a foreign businessman with whom I was having a torrid affair. (This was the ‘80s folks, The Simpsons hadn’t been invented yet, and Madonna was seen as the height of fashion. We had literally nothing better to do).
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| They just don't make toys like this any more |
I don’t know exactly how long my relationship with Terry lasted, realistically it was probably only about a week max, but in kid years that’s a long time. My mother, who (perhaps not without reason) seemed to think I was a little slow, patiently explained to me that Terry “not real” and “you know he’s only chocolate, right?” Rather than being puzzled over this, I was outraged. Of COURSE I knew Terry was chocolate-based, and not an ACTUAL monkey! The foil-based nature of his skin had never bothered me, I could see past all that. Terry was the best friend I’d ever had, he was funny, smelled good and was a great listener. Plus, I reasoned, if my mother saw how good I was at taking care of a chocolate monkey, she might be more likely to one day consider expanding my monkey army. (That is the collective term for monkeys right?). Well, that was the theory anyway…
Until one day, disaster struck. My mother called us in for dinner, and as I ran through the door I fell, CRUSHING TERRY TO DEATH. There was foil and chocolate shards everywhere. My mother found her recently bereaved child hilarious. I still remember her making weak attempts to comfort me through her fits of hysterical laughter; by the end we were both crying, as usual for different reasons.
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| It was the best of times, it was the worst of times |
I was inconsolable for days, so much so that I never touched a bite of Terry’s fragmented corpse. Not only had I lost my best friend, I moreover felt cheated. See, I’d thought Terry was completely SOLID chocolate. It was the main reason I hadn’t eaten him up until that point – I’d thought that, since we were friends, it’d be downright rude not to finish eating him in one go, so I’d been waiting for a day when I was sufficiently hungry (stew Tuesday for example) that I could give Terry the proper send-off he deserved, like some sort of delicious Viking burial.
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| Goodnight sweet prince... |
Instead I was swindled by a funny-talking fake uncle.
So the lesson is kids, never take sweets from strangers. Or, take the sweets, but try not to bond with them. Toothache heals more easily than heartache.
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