Monkey June Stories

Story Three

Today I’m going to tell you about one of the strangest days that Monkey June ever had.

If you’ve never heard of Monkey June, I recommend you go back and read some of the stories before this one. If you have heard of her, then you already know that she was a girl who loved monkeys. She was a little obsessed with them. A little more than a little, some would say…

Every part of her room was decorated with some kind of monkeys. Everything she wore had monkeys on it. She had monkey hair clips, monkey socks, monkey stickers on her water bottle…I think you get the point. 

Some people get obsessed with things, but Monkey June was way beyond obsessed with monkeys—I mean, it was even part of her name (and some of you remember how that happened).

Monkey June’s friends were not obsessed with monkeys—or anything, really. Her friend Carolyn really liked horses, and she had one—a real live horse—and she knew how to ride horses and such, but she wasn’t obsessed with them. 

Her friend Marilyn really loved traveling and visiting new places, but she wasn’t obsessed with travel. She was actually at home most of the time.

Her newest friend Phil wasn’t obsessed with anything either. Monkey June thought that maybe he needed something to be obsessed with—or at least interested in. He was new in town and it didn’t seem like he had found any hobbies or interests yet. Monkey June was working on that…

Enough about her friends, though—I was trying to tell you about her strangest day…

Monkey June arrived at school that day a little early, which was her favorite way to arrive at school. Can you guess why? That’s right: she could spend a little time at her favorite place before school started: the monkey bars.

She was climbing around pretending to be the king of the monkeys in a faraway jungle somewhere, but it wasn’t as fun as usual because no one else was there to play with her and pretend to be her monkey subjects. There was one boy there, but he looked like he was from about two grades below Monkey June, and she didn’t know him, so she wasn’t about to go over there and ask him if he’d like to pretend to be a monkey and call her ‘Your Majesty’—in Monkey language, which sounded like, ‘Mmm, ooh, MMM!’

She did stop swinging for a moment to take a good look at the boy, though; he seemed to be crying. Maybe he needed some help, she thought. 

Monkey June wasn’t the kind of girl who just kept swinging upside-down by her legs and enjoying herself when someone nearby needed help. She hopped down from the monkey bars and went over to the boy.

“Hey, there,” she said quietly, not wanting to frighten him. “You okay?”

The boy was not okay. He blubbered something about wanting something and not having it, or having something and not wanting it, or—well between the crying and the breathing strangely and all, she couldn’t quite figure out what was going on with him.

Monkey June was not a girl to give up easily, though. She asked him what was bothering him, and whether he needed her help at all. “Do you want me to go get a teacher?” she asked.

“No,” the boy said with a huge sniff. It was the first thing he had said that made sense. Monkey June smiled at him. Now she was getting somewhere.

“If I can’t get you a teacher, can I get you a snack? I have a banana in my backpack…” Monkey June believed that a lot of life’s problems could be solved by offering someone a snack, and when you ran across a problem that couldn’t be solved with a snack, at least you still had found a reason to share a snack, so it couldn’t be all bad. It certainly didn’t make things worse.

“I just need my bag!” the boy blubbered.

“Oh, why didn’t you say so?” Monkey June said with a cheerful, helpful voice. “Where is it? I’ll get it for you.”

“Big kids took it,” the boy said between sniffs and slobbers. “It has my favorite squishy in it! For Show and Tell!”

Monkey June felt her face get red and her ears get hot. That’s how she could always tell that she was getting angry—that and the feeling of anger building up in her chest. She was not about to stand by and let big kids pick on this poor little boy. 

“What big kids?” She asked. “Where are they? Where did they take your bag?”

The boy was crying again and couldn’t say anything, but he did point in the direction of the main door of the school. Monkey June told the boy to wait right there and she’d be right back.

She went over to the entrance of the school. There were two bigger boys standing there. They didn’t look mean, but maybe these were the ones who had taken the boy’s bag.

“Hey!” she said, sounding a little angrier than she had expected herself to sound. “See that boy over there? He’s missing his bag. I don’t suppose you know where I can find it…”

“Sure we do!” one of the boys said with a big smile. This made Monkey June even more angry. Was he proud of himself for picking on a much smaller boy?

“How dare you?” Monkey June said with a voice that sounded so grown-up that she almost felt like her mother was standing next to her about to give these boys a good talking-to.

“How dare we what?” the other boy asked.

“How dare you pick on a little kid? Give me the bag!”

Both boys looked at her like they were genuinely afraid of what she might do next. Or maybe they just looked incredibly confused.

“What are you talking about?” the first boy asked. “We didn’t pick on anyone. We helped him.”

“Yeah, I’ll bet you were…wait, what?” Monkey June was now the one looking confused.

“We saw him sitting there crying and asked him what was wrong. He said he wanted to climb on the monkey bars, but he didn’t want to lose his bag. We asked him if he wanted us to put it somewhere safe so no one would step on it, and he said ‘yes’, because he didn’t want anyone stepping on his squishy, so we did what he wanted: we put it somewhere safe.”

“Oh,” Monkey June said. “I’m sorry. When he said ‘big kids took it’ he didn’t say that he had asked some big kids to take it. I shouldn’t have thought that without checking. Anyway, where is it? I’ll get it and bring it back to him.”

“Custodian took it,” the other boy said.

“Custodian?” Monkey June said, confused again.

“Yeah, that’s a fancy word for ‘janitor’. Or maybe ‘janitor’ is a less fancy word for ‘custodian’. I can never remember. Anyway, we put it up against the building where no one could step on it, but then it disappeared. I saw Mr. Jeffries walking into the Maintenance Building with it.”

“Thanks,” Monkey June said, already running off towards the Maintenance Building. She didn’t want to be late for school, and this adventure was taking longer than she had expected. On the way she stopped to tell the little boy that she thought his bag was in the Maintenance Building and that she was on her way over to get it.

“I know,” the boy said with a sniffle.

“You know?” Monkey June asked, looking confused for maybe the third or fourth time that morning.

“He said I could knock on the door when I needed it back,” the boy said.

“But you said big kids took it.”

“They did, but then Mr. Jeffies moved it.”

“I could have used that information a few minutes ago,” Monkey June said, “but I suppose it’s my own fault for not asking more questions before I ran off. I’ll be right back…”

She ran over to the Maintenance Building, which was on the other side of the playground—not very close to the main school building—and knocked on the door. Mr. Jeffries opened the door. He was covered in grease and she could see a giant lawnmower-looking thing in pieces on the floor behind him. He looked busy.

“I’m here to get the backpack that belongs to the little boy on the playground,” Monkey June said, half out of breath.

“You’re the girl who broke the monkey bars last year,” Mr. Jeffries said as he turned and grabbed the boy’s bag from just inside the door.

“Um, yeah,” Monkey June said. “Good memory. I was hoping you’d forget that by now.”

“I never forget a good repair project,” he said. “Don’t worry if you break something else. Keeps me busy. I like fixing stuff a lot more than I like scraping gum from underneath tables.”

“For the record,” Monkey June said, taking the bag, “I never put gum under tables.”

“Good girl,” Mr. Jeffries said. “Off you go, then.”

And off she went.

The boy was happy to get his bag back, and just then the bell rang and they had to head to their homerooms. On the way, she asked the boy why he hadn’t just asked the big boys to go get his bag when he was ready to have it back. Or why he hadn’t just gone and knocked on the door of the supplies building.

“I don’t know,” the boy said.

“My mother has a saying that I always think of when I’m not sure what to do in a situation. It might be good for you to learn it. It goes like this: ‘You won’t get any answers if you never ask. You can’t find anything if you won’t get up and look for it. And nobody will open a door for you if you won’t bother to knock. Don’t just think about what you need—get up and do something.’”

“I like your mom’s saying,” the boy said.

“She made it up based on one of her favorite Bible verses. Luke 11:9. Ever heard that one?”

“I don’t know.”

“You should learn it. It’s easy. It says: ‘And I tell you, ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.’ It means you gotta get up and do something if you want results. My mom says it’s like that with people and it’s like that with God. Sitting around and crying kinda helps a little, but what helps a lot more is asking, seeking, and knocking. That’s what my mom says.”

As they went off to classes in different hallways, Monkey June thought about how strange her morning had been—but it wasn’t just strange because of the boy who didn’t know much about asking, seeking, or knocking… It had been strange because of something she had seen behind Mr. Jeffries while she was standing in the doorway of the Maintenance Building. Something she had never seen at school before. Something strange and amazing…