Story Thirteen - Part One

I wouldn’t dream of asking you what you know about the girl called ‘Monkey June’. She’s so famous nowadays that everyone knows about her. After all of the things that she has done—including being interviewed by dozens (or hundreds!) of news people and traveling the world talking to people about her adventures—it doesn’t seem possible that there could be anyone on earth who doesn’t know about her.

Everyone knows that she’s a girl who loved monkeys so much that ‘Monkey’ became part of her name. Everyone knows that everything she wears has some kind of monkey on it. Everyone knows that she personally knows quite a few monkeys and counts them as her friends.

But I’ll tell you about all the stuff that made her famous around the world some other time. This story is about a fairly normal day at school on which two of Monkey June’s friends invited her to an interesting event…

Carolyn and Marilyn were Monkey June’s best friends. Neither of them were into monkeys that much. They had their own interests. Marilyn loved playing the piano (she was getting quite good at it!) and she also loved traveling. Carolyn loved riding horses (or anything to do with horses, really). She even had her own horse that she took to competitions and to shows and trail riding and so on. Her horse’s name was Fire Biscuit, but this isn’t a story about horse-related things, so we’re going to get back to the actual story now.

Carolyn and Marilyn were sitting at their favorite lunchroom table one day when Monkey June arrived with her tray of food.

“Thanks for waiting for me so we could go through the lunch line together,” Monkey June said (a bit grumpily) as she plopped her tray down on the table and sat across from them. Then she took a closer look at the table and realized her mistake. “Oh. I get it. You two brought your lunches today. Sorry.”

“Is someone having a grumpy day?” Marilyn asked Carolyn.

“Sounds like it,” Carolyn answered. Monkey June knew that they were talking about her.

“Not grumpy, exactly,” Monkey June said. “Just tired, I think. I stayed up late last night. I was reading my new book called ‘Monkeys and Other Primates of North Africa’ and it was so interesting that I lost track of how late it was getting. The chapter on Barbary macaques was especially fascinating. Did you know that the Barbary macaque is the only primate left in North Africa? Did you also know that they don’t have tails? Did you also know that the fictional monkey known as ‘Curious George’ was probably a Barbary macaque?”

“Those are definitely monkey facts that I did not know,” Carolyn said, “but if you had some horse facts I’d enjoy those even more. Do you think there’s a book called ‘Wild Horses of North Africa’?”

“Or maybe a book called ‘Travel Guide to North Africa’s Most Interesting Places?’,” Marilyn suggested.

“I don’t know a lot about horse books or travel books,” Monkey June said. “I mainly know about monkey books.”

“Well,” said Carolyn in between bites of her sandwich, “if we’re done talking about interesting books that may or may not exist, Marilyn and I have an invitation to share with you related to one of our other interests.”

“What kind of interests?” Monkey June asked.

“You know that Carolyn and I,” said Marilyn, “are in a kids' choir that practices on Wednesday nights. We were talking, and we think it’s about time you come and visit Choir with us.”

“I’m not really into singing,” Monkey June said. “Well…I am a little…but not enough to join a choir.”

“We don’t just do singing there,” Carolyn said with a strange smile on her face. “There are…other things.”

“What kind of things?” Monkey June asked.

“Well, we usually have a Team Challenge,” Marilyn said. “Sometimes that involves Drama, or a silly dance, or writing a poem, or inventing a Christmas carol…”

“And we have story time,” Carolyn continued, “and of course we sing…oh, and some kids work on Tech—like the computer lyrics and sound board, and we sometimes have competitions between the teams, and…it’s all very fun.”

“What kinds of competitions?” Monkey June asked.

“That’s what made us think of inviting you again,” Marilyn explained. “Our Choir Leader said he’s thinking of doing a strange new competition soon, and we thought it sounded like something you might enjoy.”

“It definitely sounded like something you’d enjoy,” Carolyn said, nodding slowly.

“Strange how?” Monkey June asked.

“Maybe the name of it will help describe it,” Marilyn said. “He said he’s going to call it, ‘The First Annual Kids’ Choir Monkey Games'.”

Monkey June’s eyes got very big when Marilyn said that.

“Monkey Games?” she asked.

“He said they’re a collection of different races and competitions that you can only win if you complete the challenges in…monkey mode,” Carolyn explained.

“That…sounds…AWESOME!” Monkey June shouted.

Just then, Mr. Jeffries stopped at their table and reminded them to keep their conversations more quiet in the cafeteria. After he moved on to other tables, Marilyn and Carolyn told Monkey June about how they figured she’d be perfect for something called ‘Monkey Games’, since she knew a lot about monkeys and even had some monkeys who were friends of hers.

“Thanks for telling me about this!” Monkey June said as lunch was ending. She noticed that some kids were already getting up to go to class. She realized that she had forgotten to eat about half of her food. She said, “I’ll ask my mom about it tonight, and I’ll try to be there Wednesday.” Then she finished eating her lunch as fast as she could.

When Monkey June arrived at Choir that Wednesday night, she was added to a team called ‘Avocado’. She had no idea why they had a team called that, but there was no ‘Monkey’ team, so she figured Avocado was as good as anything else. There were five or six other teams as well, with odd names like ‘Mustard’, ‘Snail’, ‘Corn’, ‘Taco’, ‘BLT’, and ‘Dragonfruit’. She wondered why they had a team called ‘Mustard’. She began to think that this Choir was pretty strange.

At the very beginning of Choir time, the leader guy started talking about the upcoming ‘First Annual Kids’ Choir Monkey Games', and that really grabbed Monkey June’s attention. He explained a few of the games that he had planned and asked the teams to come up with other game ideas for him, during their ‘attendance time’.

The teams came up with a lot of interesting ideas for races and competitions, all of which had to be done ‘monkey style’. They wrote them down on their attendance sheets so the choir guy could read them later. The following week, the First Annual Kids' Choir Monkey Games would take place.

After that, they sang some songs, and Monkey June learned a strange new word: ‘Berble’. It was not a word that she had ever heard before. She learned that it meant ‘immediately stand up and face the front with legs shoulder-length apart, back straight, shoulders relaxed, a smile on your face, and your eyes on the choir leader guy’. It was a lot of meaning to pack into a single strange word, but it was the perfect word for a group of kids who were getting ready to sing something together.

After that, they heard a Bible story about a guy from the Bible who God told to do something amazing, but the guy was kind of scared to do it. God gave him the confidence to do it, though, and it all worked out. The guy learned that it wasn’t really him doing the amazing stuff, but God doing it through him.

After Choir, Marilyn and Carolyn asked Monkey June if she had enjoyed Choir.

“I definitely did!” she said. “And now I know what to say to you at school if I need you to stand up and face me with smiles on your faces and relaxed shoulders!”

“So you’ll come back next week,” Carolyn asked, “and participate in the First Annual Kids' Choir Monkey Games?”

“Oh, yes,” she said. “I wouldn’t miss it!”

The next thing she said was kind of quiet, as if she might be just talking to herself:

“Oh, yeah. I need to remember when I get home to see if I can find my monkey pillow…”