EXCEPT THE SOCK MONKEY

There are TWO monkeys with whom I have a close and personal connection. Both were veterans of the company at which I used to work, and both have abandonment issues. But the second one is completely sane. A very decent little purple-black fellow.
Serious, polite, and a capable all-rounder.
Not so the first.
He's nuts.


Many years ago the evil elf in charge of the Marketing Department kidnapped him (first monkey) from the lab in Product Development, where they had been running experiments chopping off his leg and palling him up with alcoholic Elmo -- Elmo being one of the muppets, a nasty fuzzy yellow degenerate who likes whiskey and cigarettes -- and stuffed him in a savage pumpkin daemon's mouth for Halloween.
No, the bastards in Marketing did NOT win the carving contest that year.
I think Product Development did; creative geniuses.
We never found out what they did with the leg. It's probably roaming trash-dumps and hobo jungles as a zombie limb, with animatronic Frankensteinian modifications. Drug addicts and alkies all over the Bay Area wake up screaming because of it.

I didn't eat it, no matter what you may have heard.

Urasmus Wazzoo (the monkey) spent several days on display in the company kitchen, before the office manager decided that Halloween was so last week and attracting fruit flies.
I rescued him, took him home with me, cleaned him, and sewed up the wounds. Ever since then he's been furiously demanding that I supply him with bananas and pork. It is because of him that we refer to a certain class of meat products in our household as "pink tofu".

When my apartment mate fries up rashers of pink tofu in the morning, he starts screaming.


"PIIIIIIIIIG! GIMME!"


I ignore it. Nothing can interest me in fried food that early. Shut up, furball, it's just fatty beancurd.

Like all of the insane roomies, he lives on my side of the apartment.

The sane ones are over in my apartment mate's room.

I certainly did not plan it this way.

I suspect foul play.

A plot.


The second monkey was holding down the fort in the Marketing Department area in the days after our big move to a warehouse in Hayward.
There were still credenzas and chairs to load in the old location, and I went there to help shift things and pack up the remaining odds and ends, which is how I came to discover him all by himself.
We had first met in 2001, and even at that time I recognized a kindred spirit. But he was in Marketing, whereas I was in Finance, so we didn't talk much.

In September of 2012, he was the last man standing as regards our San Francisco office. So whenever I had a credenza to wheel to the rear entrance, I perched him on top of it to supervise and navigate.
We roared through the halls at top speed.


"WHEEEEEEE!"


That was me yelling. The monkey remained utterly calm.

Didn't crash more than once. And that was because we lost a wheel; cheap cubicle furnishings. A mere technical issue, I should've checked the landing gear first. Arabello Oyster proved an adept 'control monkey'.

Of course I brough him home with me. If those oafs in Marketing are going to forsake a valued and intelligent member of their team, and leave him in a deserted office, screw them. They don't deserve him!


Urasmus (the first monkey) is bitterly resentful. We don't need more than one monkey, he avers, and since he himself is the best possible simian there is, mr. Oyster should leave, just leave. Go on, push off! And why, he demands, do I address that creature with the honoric "mister"? What kind of a doofus name is "Arabello Oyster"? Control Monkey?
What's this about "Control Monkey"?
Stupid gorilla!

Arabello Oyster spends a lot of time on the other side, talking to the Teddy Bear and the others who live there. He's a very considerate creature.

Unlike Urasmus Wazzoo, who just thinks about bananas and pork.


Actually, there is a third monkey. Of the sock persuasion. He too is a rather nice chap. But my apartment mate's boy friend is the reason for him living with us. So he doesn't share the experiences and memories that Urasmus, Arabello, and I do. He was never at the same place, and we don't know too much about his past.

He hardly visits, and spends most of his time with the cat.



I'm slightly allergic to bananas.




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