Monkey June Stories

Story Seven

If you don’t remember much about Monkey June, I’ll take a minute here to remind you of a few facts about her: She was a girl who loved monkeys. She was actually somewhat obsessed with them. More than obsessed, most people would say—and most people would be right.

Her bedroom was covered in almost every imaginable monkey-related decoration. Almost every clothing item she owned had some kind of monkey design on it. She had the largest collection of stuffed-animal monkeys in the world. Well…maybe not ‘in the world’—but it had to be the largest collection in her town.

You might think that with a name like ‘June’ her birthday would be in the month of June, but it was not; it was October 31st. This usually tied in very nicely with her love of monkeys, her love of dressing up in costumes, and her love of hanging out with her two best friends, Marilyn and Carolyn. Every year their birthday present to Monkey June was to let her come up with a three-person group costume that they would all wear while celebrating her birthday.

One year they dressed up as three long-haired orangutans. Another year they were three circus monkeys, with little red caps on their heads, cute little vests, and everything. Once they had been two Animal Control workers who had captured a wild monkey—and I’ll let you guess which of the three girls was the monkey…

This year, Monkey June had come up with her best group costume idea ever. Carolyn and Marilyn had agreed that it was just perfect, and the three friends couldn’t wait to dress up as—

Wait. I’ll just take a break from telling this story for a minute, and ask you what you think Monkey June’s ‘Best Group Costume Ever’ idea was…

Okay. Welcome back to the story and thanks for sharing all of those cool ideas. I’ll pass some of those along to MJ so she can think about using one of them on her next birthday.

For this birthday, though, her plan was that she and her two best friends would be…drum-roll please…Space Monkeys!

Their mothers had already found some shiny space-suit material and had been working on turning it into space-suits for the girls. Once those were ready it would be up to the girls to go shopping for some monkey masks and rubbery monkey hands and feet that they could put on so it would look like three monkeys were wearing the space suits. They even hoped to find space helmets that would finish off the look perfectly—but even if they didn’t, the costumes were still going to be amazing.

The plan was for everything to come together on October 31st—Monkey June’s birthday.

But that’s not exactly what happened. In fact, I need to warn you that this story gets a little…unhappy starting about now. If you’ve ever had a really rough day—the kind of day where everything that can possibly go wrong does go wrong, and then a bunch of stuff that no one ever dreamed could possibly go wrong also goes wrong—then you may know the feeling of where Monkey June’s day was headed. I wish I could skip past this part, but that’s not how stories work.

On the morning of her birthday Monkey June woke up in a rather confused state. What confused her most was that the monkey clock on the table next to her bed did not say six o-clock as it usually did while making a bunch of cute monkey noises to wake Monkey June up. It showed no numbers at all. It was just blank. And the clock’s cute monkey noises had never happened.

“That is very strange,” she said to herself as she swung her feet onto the floor and got up.

She wondered if it was later than six o-clock. A quick look out the window past her monkey curtains didn’t tell her anything, because it was so cloudy and dark and grey outside that it could have been just about any time at all.

Monkey June made her way downstairs. Her mother was in the kitchen.

“There you are!” her mother said. “You don’t look ready to go! You’d better get moving. It’s time to leave for school.”

“What?” Monkey June asked. “Time to go? What time is it?”

“It’s seven-thirty,” her mother said. “Don’t tell me you’ve been oversleeping this whole time!”

“I think I’ve been oversleeping this whole time,” Monkey June said.

“I asked you not to tell me that,” her mother mumbled.

“Well, it’s true, I guess. My clock is blank. Maybe it got unplugged or something. Where’s Dad?”

“He had to go to work early today,” her mother said. “Maybe that monkey clock of yours is broken. We’ll take a look at it later. Right now, though, you need to set the World Record for getting ready for school. Can you do it in three minutes?”

Monkey June did not think that she could do it in three minutes, but she ran off to give it a try.

She shouldn’t have run, though. Her legs were still a little sleepy, and she tripped going up the stairs and landed flat on her face. Luckily, falling up a few stairs is usually a lot less painful than falling down stairs—but it felt like the stair-carpet had given her a painful spot of carpet-burn on her chin.

She got up and walked quickly (no running this time) into the bathroom to get ready.

A red rash of carpet-burn was definitely forming on her chin, and it did not feel good. While looking at herself in the mirror, though, Monkey June noticed something far worse than that: her hair was a mess!

Now, you’re probably going to say that everyone’s hair is a mess when they first wake up and that that’s nothing to get upset about, but what Monkey June saw in her bathroom mirror was no ordinary Bad Hair Day hair. No, no, no. This was much worse. This was worse than Crazy Hair Day at school. This was worse than the time her mother told her it looked like a flock of angry birds had built nests in her hair. This was hair so messy, so ridiculous, so astonishing, so insane, that a whole new phrase had to be invented to describe it…

It was Impossible Hair—and one look at it told Monkey June that this was going to be an Impossible Hair Day.

She tried brushing it out with her favorite monkey brush. It refused to cooperate. She tried wetting it. She tried combing it. She tried clawing at it with her fingers like she had seen monkeys do at the zoo (and on her favorite tropical island). Nothing helped. In fact, everything she tried only made it worse.

“Fine,” she said, talking to the crazy-looking wild child looking at her from the mirror. “I’ll just go to school like this. I’ll tell people it’s…um…part of a costume I’m working on.”

She brushed her teeth, rushed into her room, quickly found some random clothes and threw them on, and ran—I mean ‘walked rather quickly’—back downstairs.

“June!” her mother was already yelling. “C’mon! We need to go!”

Monkey June’s mother looked at her very strangely when she saw her Impossible Hair and mismatched clothing, but thought it would be best not to say anything. Monkey June grabbed her monkey backpack (suddenly remembering that she hadn’t done last night’s homework—ugh!) and headed out the door.

The moment they stepped outside, a tremendous crack of thunder made it sound like the entire sky had just broken in two.

“Arrgh!” Monkey June said.

“Hm,” her mother said. “Guess we’ll have a bit of a thunderstorm this morning. No worries, though.”

Monkey June did have worries, though. The wind was blowing like crazy. The rain came down harder and harder as they drove to school. They had to take two roads that they normally didn’t take, because giant trees had fallen over the roads they usually took. Lightning flashed constantly, and after every flash came a crack of thunder that seemed louder than the one before it.

“Should you be driving in this?” Monkey June asked her mother. “Should they be having school today?”

“Just a small storm,” her mother said. “It’s fine.”

By the time they got to school, Monkey June had used her favorite Bible verse about fifteen times. It was the first Bible verse she had ever learned—back when she was around two years old:

Jesus said, ‘Don’t be afraid…’ Luke 12:7

Her parents said that when she was little she had always called it ‘Lu-twe-sen’, but she was older now, and she said it the regular way these days.

She also worked on a new one she had been learning. It was 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18, but she could only remember the last part of it (verse 18) so far:

…give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus. 1 Thessalonians 5:18

It was a very strange to think about being thankful when bad things were happening, but ‘all circumstances’ means ‘all situations’, and that means both good and bad situations.

After many repetitions of ‘Give thanks in all circumstances’ and ‘Don’t be afraid’, Monkey June realized that they had made it to school. She ran in (while getting soaked by pelting rain) and rushed to her first class of the day. She got there late, of course, and the whole class looked at her when she walked in. From the looks she saw on the kids' faces, she must have been quite a sight.

As she found her desk and sat down, Monkey June realized that her mother hadn’t even wished her a happy birthday!

You might think that once Monkey June got to school her day got back on track. Sadly, it did not. I don’t have time to tell you about the undone homework assignment that got counted as a zero (although I’m sure you saw that one coming), the surprise quiz in her second class, how she kept getting her hair caught on things while she walked around the school, how her Gym class was cancelled due to ‘renovations in the gym’ (—and on the day they were supposed to play her favorite game: Monkey Tag!), how she kept being asked about the weird rash on her chin, and…I’m sure you get the idea.

Monkey June was having the worst day ever—and it was on her birthday!

Every time something bad happened, though, she’d remind herself to ‘Give thanks in every situation’ and she’d try to look for a bright side. It was hard to imagine the bright side of getting your hair caught in a fire-alarm box and almost setting off the alarm. She figured that the bright side had been that she hadn’t actually set off the fire alarm. She didn’t want to imagine the whole school standing out in the rain for an hour if the alarm had gone off!

The worst thing was that she didn’t see either of her two best friends all day! Marilyn didn’t seem to be at school, and neither did Carolyn. She hoped that they weren’t sick. They had plans that evening! Plans that involved dressing up like Space Monkeys!

As she walked in the door after school that day, Monkey June was still mumbling to herself, “Give thanks in all circumstances.” Her immediate plans were to:

1. get changed out of her wet clothes (it was still raining) and
2. reach out her friends to see why they hadn’t been at school.

Before she could do those things, though, her mother got a distressing phone call. She motioned for Monkey June not to go anywhere.

Monkey June’s mother said, ‘Yes’ and ‘I see’ and ‘Oh’ and ‘Do you really think so?’ and ‘Oh my’ and ‘I think we could be there that quickly’ and a few other serious-sounding things that Monkey June didn’t quite catch.

The moment Monkey June’s mother hung up the phone she was already grabbing her purse, rushing towards the door, and telling Monkey June that she needed to get back in the car. She also said something about an emergency, but Monkey June didn’t quite hear that part.

“Where’s Dad?” Monkey June asked. “Can’t I just stay here with him? And where’s Corey?”

“Your father had to work late today, and Corey is playing with a friend. I’m sorry, but you'’ll have to come with me. Besides, I’m going to need your help with this situation. Let’s go.”

“Give thanks in every situation,” Monkey June said in a quiet, sad voice as she trudged back out to the car.

“What’s that, dear?” her mother asked.

“Nothing,” Monkey June said. As she fastened her seatbelt, she remembered again that it was her birthday, and not one person had mentioned it all day. She felt so glum that she didn’t even pay attention to where they were going or ask anything about what kind of ‘situation’ was going on. She just stared out the car window at the rain as her mother drove.

Monkey June was completely befuddled when her mother pulled up at Monkey June’s school. If you’ve never seen the word ‘befuddled’ before, it just means ‘confused, but ten times more confused than regular confused’. (I suppose I could have said that Monkey June was ten times more confused than regular confused, but that would have taken a lot more words.)

“I’m going to need help,” her mother said, jumping out of the car and practically running into the school. It was still raining, but at least it wasn’t storming anymore. Monkey June ran after her into the school.

The school was deserted. Monkey June could barely keep up with her mother as she rushed down one empty hallway after another. What possible emergency could have caused her mother to race over to the school like this? None of it made any sense. None of her entire day made any sense!

Monkey June turned a corner and found herself in the hallway outside of the gym. Her mother was nowhere to be seen, but there were two strange figures standing in the middle of the hall. They were kid-sized figures. They were…shiny. They were…furry. They were…her friends Carolyn and Marilyn! Dressed as Space Monkeys!

“‘Bout time you got here,” Marilyn said. “Quick—put this on!” She shoved a third Space Monkey outfit into Monkey June’s hands.

“Happy birthday!” Carolyn said. “Here—let me help with that.”

A minute or so later, three space monkeys (one of them far more befuddled than the others) walked into the gym and saw the most amazing thing that anyone had ever seen in the history of the school. The entire gym had been transformed into an indoor carnival! It was monkey-themed, of course, and the whole thing had been set up to celebrate Monkey June’s birthday.

“We were going to have it in the field down the block from your house,” Carolyn explained, “but with all the rain and mud your mom and dad had to figure out a different plan—and quick.”

Marilyn chimed in. “They got permission from the school to use the gym, since they were already borrowing the school’s carnival stuff—but only if they made it an all-school event.”

“The entire school is here?” Monkey June asked.

“Pretty much,” Carolyn said. “Your parents and little Corey and me and Marilyn have been here all day, working in the gym to get things ready.”

“So you didn’t miss school at all!”

“Well, we had to miss the boring parts,” Marilyn said. “Thanks for that.”

“So the gym wasn’t ‘under renovation’,” Monkey June said.

“Oh, it was,” Monkey June’s mother said, suddenly appearing beside her. “We were renovating it into this!”

A giant smiling monkey took up an entire wall of the gym. There was a dunking booth. There were midway games. There was a cotton candy machine. There was a sno-cone cart. There were three different kinds of inflatables! There were even rides! And everything was set up in the gym, with no rain anywhere in sight.

It was the most fun that Monkey June and her friends had ever had. Everyone Monkey June knew was there: Chill Phil, Ryan, Maisie, Mr. Jeffries—even her grandfather had come from out-of-town to join them in the celebrations!

It was the best night ever. It was her best birthday ever. And since ‘best birthday ever’ was a situation, and she knew it was important to give thanks in every situation, Monkey June found herself very thankful indeed as she remembered 1 Thessalonians 5:18 all night long:

…give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.

And the more she said it to herself, the more she noticed that the word ‘Thessalonians’ was pretty fun to say.