the philosopher aristotle once proclaimed: “everybody has something to hide except me and my monkey.” but nobody ever hid HIS monkey.

it began innocently enough. i was at a gallery event at which they ply you with alcohol so you buy their art. i thought i was impervious, given that mo does this to me on a daily basis, but i underestimated the power of three diet pepsis downed in rapid succession. at the end of the evening, i found myself the proud owner of a space monkey wine decanter. or so i thought.

my rationale was that my spring marathon had been torpedoed, leaving me with a bit of discretionary cash. and what’s the point of discretionary cash if you can’t buy something discretionarily (yes, that might be a real word)? my running mojo has been at a low ebb. what better way  to restore it than a running mojojojo? i paid somewhere in the ballpark of $17,000 (for insurance purposes), although if you were in that ballpark, you would not actually be able to see the monkey with a telescope. which is sad, given that he’s a space monkey.

we were in no shape that night for monkey toting, so i left him at the gallery  to sleep it off. when i returned a few days later, i was told i couldn’t take him yet because he was crazy glued to a pedestal. which reminds me of my delta sigma pi years, except there was no drunk rooster and a cambodian guy trying to tell a joke while i sat on a block of ice. i came back the next day, AND HE WAS GONE. the monkey; not the cambodian guy. i’m not sure if the cambodian guy was ever found, although i’m almost certain i returned the rooster. 

i was told the artist needed to do something to him and had taken him home. that was saturday. today is tuesday. STILL no monkey. they’re now saying the artist wanted to take a photo of him. which apparently takes more than five days. might be back in a day or two, they say. shrug. art people shrug a lot. 

I PAID FOR THIS MONKEY, DAMMIT! we bonded. and now, he’s missing. and so is my running mojojojo.

they won’t give me a refund. they won’t give me a straight answer. i wanted to yell at the lady at the front desk, but she’s my wife, and yelling pretty much never works with her.

as a student of hallmark movies, i guess i should have expected it. boy meets monkey, boy loses monkey, boy gets monkey back again. except for that last part.

i guess the moral is: a fool and his monkey are soon parted. i hate morals. this is likely what aristotle meant when he said: “you never give me your monkey; you only give me your funny paper.” aristotle was wise. 

upside: i have access to the artist’s studio, and she’s almost never there. i hope there are more  monkeys. i need to get back to running …

space monkey and me in happier times (he has a ray gun; i have a staple gun)