My Son, The Monkey Boy

I have expressed my periodic doubts about my son, Thing 2, in this space before. That's what fathers do. We worry about our sons repeating the mistakes we made in our own lives.

Meanwhile, us Dads worry about our daughters driving us broke and then needing to live off greasy, dollar bills earned twirling around a shiny brass pole while being leered at by sleaze like A-Rod. Fatherhood should come with better warning labels.

As I was saying, I had just settled in for a few chapters of Jane Leavy's excellent book about Sandy Koufax (I have fondness for biographies and Jewish lefthanders who can bring the heat) when My Love crawled in under the sheets. Seems she had just completed a heart-to-heart with our 6-year-old wonder boy … about his career path.

This is a good sign, I thought. He knew to bring this up with his PowerPoint-wieldin', six-figure-earnin', HR-executive goddess Mom rather than his slovenly, semi-employed Dad -- a man whose bank deposits are so small and infrequent that Quicken Home & Business edition won't even pretend to go through the motions of trying to find and download them anymore.

"He said to me: 'Mom, I want an exciting job ... like working with monkeys."

"Having spent my working life mostly in newsrooms, PR shops and corporate headquarters, I think he's on to something, hon."

"Me, too," My Love said. "But he's worried about one thing. The monkeys might jump on his head."

"Really?"

"So he said he'll need to wear red or blue clothes. Definitely not green or brown."

"Uh, why not green or brown?"

Here, My Love broke into the classic Thing 2 whine of disbelief: "'Because, Moooom! The monkeys might think I'm a tree.'"

Good reasoning again (see photos). At barely over 6 years of age, Thing 2 stands at an impressive 53 inches high (that's 4-foot-5 for the math impaired among you). Only one kid was taller than him in his kindergarten class. That was only on days when she wore her hair up.

"And what if the monkeys end up tap dancing on his noggin?" I asked.

"Then he would prefer a job swimming with sharks."

(Fill in your favorite lawyer joke here. My response to her was just, "Well, it's always good to have fall-back plans.")

My Love continued. "I said to him that I guess we did a good job sending him to the camp at the nature center this summer because he's learning all about animals. His response was, 'But Moooom! I don't get paid at camp!'"

"He wants to get paid to go to camp? He's spending waaaay too much time listening to his sister again."

"So I told him he didn't get paid because he wasn't working …"

"Just like his Dad …"

"… and he wouldn't get paid until he got a real job, and for that he needed to go to school, learn to read and learn math. Then it was all, 'MOOOOOOM! I know math,' and he made me test him with a bunch of addition questions. He's pretty good, too."

This conversation made me realize one thing. I need to worry less about the boy and more about my own lack of paid employment.

Hmm, monkeys are kinda cool.

But before you start tripping over yourselves to give Thing 2 some comment love, ponder this: My next full post will be titled: "My Son, The Budding Racist."

Finally, monkeys love applause. Go to Humor-Blogs.com, register and give me a smiley face. I dare ya.