There's a Monkey Behind You

So it's 1998, and I'm driving down some lonely Texas road in the middle of nowhere. I'm on a book signing tour for 28 days straight, 13 states, 16 stores, and walking into every book store in every mall on the way, not to mention every stand alone store. I had my wife Debbie and our two oldest boys, Jake and Clay, along for the ride. Matthew wasn't born yet. At the time, Jake had just turned five and Clay was three.

So back to that lonely Texas road... I am driving my silver Caddy along, minding my own business, when a pickup goes by with something odd in the back. At least if you consider a loose, full-grown bengal tiger in the back of your pickup to be odd. Now, guys, I don't drink. I promise, I was stone cold sober when that tiger went by. At first I thought maybe I had been staring at road stripes too long, but when I looked in the rearview mirror I thought to myself, "Road stripes don't ride in the back of pickups." But neither do tigers! Well, at least they probably shouldn't.

To satisfy my own curiosity, which is vast, I slammed on the brakes and did a Dukes of Hazzard turn-around in the middle of the highway. My Caddy could go from zero to sixty in five seconds, or so it seemed, so it was no time before we were closing on the pickup. And the tiger. And it was most definitely a tiger. We found ourselves wondering what would happen if the guy had to stop for gas.

So anyway, I needed to head on to my next book signing and had no time to follow our tiger any farther, so we turned back around. But this is only the beginning of my story. I am not--incidentally--making any of this up--all fiction writing aside. This is a true story, and not even the names have been changed to protect the innocent.

As we continue driving down this lonely Texas road, I was needless to say slightly consternated when I look to my left and remark a full-grown giraffe walking leisurely down the fence line. No doubt looking for his tiger. Turns out the giraffe's name was Jake. No kidding.

After snapping a few shots of this giraffe which appeared to be running free in the wilds of Texas, we came upon a sign advertising "WILDLIFE SAFARI." That calmed us down a little, but of course we were intrigued enough that we pulled into this winding dirt lane and stopped at this rickety old building out in the middle of the chaparral. I can't remember what we paid for this safari that was to follow, but whatever it was it was worth it. There was a male ostrich that would eat right out of a bucket in your hands, but only the strongest people on the safari trailer were allowed to hold the bucket, because he could almost take it out of your hands with one peck. There was a huge bull bison that would eat grain right out of the palm of your hand--and leave this terrific green, frothy mush between your fingers in the process. Yeah. Real nice.

But that is as far as I'm going to share of our safari adventures, because the real adventure happened before the actual safari. See, we had to wait twenty minutes or so for the safari trailer to make its way back around to us, and in the meantime we were told there was a little zoo out back that we could peruse while we were waiting. With much excitement but little fanfare, we made our way back on a winding path to a smattering of sturdy cages. They were filled with all kinds of animals, the kind that are too small or too furtive to spot on a safari so are doomed to the fate of being locked up like dangerou felons for happy tourists to gawk at at take pictures of. I can't tell you, to be honest, what any of the animals in those cages were. Except for two of them.

These were spider monkeys.

There was a big black monkey and a smaller brown monkey. Male and female? I don't know. Just a wild guess. But they soon drew our attention, because they kept hanging their arms out the cage, clear up to their shoulders, with their fingers outstretched. They looked for all the world like scrawny little hairy funeral directors. And they truly looked like their feelings would be hurt if we didn't shake their hands. Honest.

Well, a glance around the place told us we were actually alone. Bad scenario. You see, I have always been an animal lover. Or should I say I've always had an interest in being close to animals. So this is a moment I just couldn't pass up. Like any polite person would have done, I extended my hand in greeting. And the spider monkey took it. She was very gentle, too. She gave my hand a little shake and seemed to know all the decorum required of a funeral director. She even gave me a sad little nod and a tilt of her head, as if extending her condolences through this much practiced expression.

Like father like son. Yeah, I know, I'm an idiot. But when Jake started jumping up and down saying he wanted to shake hands too, what could I do? I held him up to the cage, and the little brown monkey shook his hand gently but firmly and told him with his eyes how sorry he was for Jacob and his loss. Yeah, whatever. Now, for the good part. There was no way on this green earth that Debbie was going to shake that monkey's hand. Shoot, who knows where a monkey's hand has been? Well, actually, we probably all knew where that monkey's hand had been, which made Debbie about the only intelligent person in that zoo at the moment. But Clay, now, he just HAD to shake that hand. So like the doting dad, I picked Clay up and held him out....to his doom.

In Debbie's defense, she was running a video camera at the time, and she couldn't very well fly to Clay's rescue as we all know she would have. In the moments that followed, all monkey heck broke loose. Clay's hand was taken in greeting, but unfortunately, Clay being more the size of the monkeys, they decided they would either adopt him or have him for dinner. We never found out which. The monkey's other hand shot out of the cage, and it grabbed Clay by his upper arm and started pulling him into the cage. I had to grab it's hand and jerk it loose and shoved it back into the cage, pulling Clay away with my other hand while he screamed in horror. But not as much horror as the monkey, robbed of its new toy. That monkey raised the demons from below, I swear. It started screaming in the most blood curdling cry you've ever heard, and needless to say we slunk away from there in horror, hoping we could vanish from the zoo before the owners showed up to see what the ruckus was about.

But the story doesn't end here. After leaving the maniac funeral director monkey and Jake the giraffe, we headed out to finish the rest of our tour. By this point, the boys were really tired of book stores and malls, and it took a lot of work to get them to walk fast so we could move on to the next store. So, because Clay was so afraid of monkeys now, if he was dallying, all we had to do was say, "Come on, Clay, there's a monkey behind you." Usually without even looking back he would come running to us. Even when he did look back and saw no monkey, he still kept running each time the ploy was used.

As all good ploys, however, this one was overused, and in the end it was almost my demise. We had been using the "monkey behind you" scare tactic to hurry Clay up for three days when we stopped in a Dallas mall and hit up Waldenbooks with our usual spiel about buying my books. We had an appointment for a book signing after that, so we were in a big hurry to get out and get to the next mall. But Clay was dragging his feet like nobody's business. He was tired, hungry, and hot, and he was fed up with malls. But he was still afraid of monkeys.

If I had looked back at Clay the next moments would not have been so traumatic. But I hadn't. I just glanced at him out of the corner of my eye, realized he was dallying, and uttered the same by now brainless comment, "Look out, Clay, there's a monkey behind you."

As I finished speaking, to check on the effect my statement had on my three-year-old, I turned and looked at him. There, directly behind my son, was a black man. He appeared to be about 6' 6" and three hundred fifty pounds. To say my heart leaped into my throat was putting it mildly. Clay run to me, thinking this time a monkey really was behind him, and I stood there in shock, thinking I was about to be pounded into the ground. To end the story abruptly, it turned out this guy was engrossed in some other thought and haven't even heard me. But I learned that day to look before I leaped, and I also stopped telling Clay there were monkeys behind him.

Incidentally, there were crowded malls along our route where not one white person was in sight. But we quickly became very relaxed, particularly in Texas, where what appeared to be entire gangs of black men would stop to chat with us and see where we were from, just as friendly as can be. Other than the spider monkey, everyone we met in Texas was pretty friendly. Well, and maybe she was too. A little TOO friendly for Clay's liking.

So if you ever get a chance to shake hands with a monkey, just think where that monkey's hand has been and pass on that opportunity. And whatever you do, if anyone says there's a monkey behind you--RUN!!!!