Story Thirteen - Part Two

The Wednesday for Monkey Games arrived. It was hard to concentrate at school that day because so many of Monkey June’s friends were excited about The First Annual Kids' Choir Monkey Games happening that night.

When I say ‘so many of her friends’, I don’t just mean Carolyn and Marilyn. They had invited more friends than Monkey June. They had also invited Chill Phil, Ryan, Maisie, and a few others. And those people had invited more people! It seemed like half the school might be at Choir that night.

When Monkey June arrived at Choir, Marilyn and Carolyn met her in the hall outside the Choir Room.

“Hi, MJ!” Marilyn said. “Glad you got here a little early. What’s in the monkey backpack?”

“Can’t say,” Monkey June said. “Could be anything. Could be nothing. Wow…it sounds crazy in there.”

“Yeah,” Carolyn said. “We have more kids than usual this week. I guess a lot of kids heard about the Monkey Games and wanted to try them out.”

“Great!” Monkey June said, “More competition!”

“You seem really confident,” Marilyn pointed out. “Almost…too confident.”

“No one knows monkeys better me,” Monkey June said.

“True,” Marilyn said. “I just hope nothing…unexpected happens.”

“Like what?” Monkey June asked, looking very innocent.

“Never mind,” Marilyn said. “Let’s just go in and grab a spot on one of the red couches.”

I don’t know if you’ve ever been to an event like ‘Monkey Games’ before, but I hope someday you get a chance to try them.

They started out with a game called ‘Monkey Mess’. The kids had to line up with their teams on both sides of some baskets. When the choir guy said ‘Go’ in monkey language (it sounded like ‘Weaeach!’ but I don’t think it’s really possible to spell it in English) kids had to take objects out of the baskets and run them over to the baskets on the other side. If a team got all their items moved over the fastest, they won.

There was a catch, though: If a team member didn’t act like, run like, sound like, and grab things exactly like a monkey would do it, they were ‘out’. Once you were out you had to cheer on your team from the sidelines. That meant no human speech was allowed, no walking upright, no laughing… It was a lot harder than you might think!

There was another catch, too: if one of your team members was sent out, the choir leader guy could dump your team’s basket and yell “Monkey Mess!” If you heard that you had to drop whatever you were doing and help your team get everything back in their basket.

By the end of the game, when the winning teams were announced, almost half of the kids had been called ‘out’. This made the teams quite a bit smaller going into the next round.

Monkey June and Carolyn and Marilyn were still ‘in’. Chill Phil was ‘in’ also. (He was really enjoying his team: Mustard.) Ryan (he was on the BLT team), had been called ‘out’ and was now watching and cheering for his team from the sidelines.

The next challenge was called ‘Food Forage’. The choir leader guy explained that monkeys have to be really good a foraging (looking) for food, so the kids would have to show that they could forage like a monkey. Using the same baskets and a lot of plastic food items, he explained that he would call out various food combinations that had to be gathered. Whoever was at the front of each line would have to quickly ‘forage’ that exact combination of food. He would call out something different each time, so there was no way of knowing what you might have to grab when it was your turn. He’d call something like ‘five orange foods’, ‘five vegetables’, or ‘five round foods’, and whoever could forage the right kinds of items before they were gone would move on to the next round.

Again, anyone not doing the challenge ‘monkey style’ was ‘out’.

Before the Food Forage competition started, Monkey June told her friends that she needed to go and grab something from her backpack.

“What kind of something?” Carolyn asked.

“Nothing important,” Monkey June answered.

“That seems…very strange,” said Carolyn.

“What’s strange about it?” Monkey June asked her.

“Food Forage is about to start,” Marilyn said. “I don’t think you’ll have time.”

“I guess not,” Monkey June said, looking a little disappointed.

By the end of the Food Forage game, the teams were even smaller. Monkey June and Carolyn and Marilyn were all still ‘in’, though.

Next was a round called ‘Monkey Facts’. Everyone could play in this round, even if they had been sent out in a previous round.

The choir leader guy explained that he would read out various monkey facts that might be true or false. One side of the floor meant ‘true’ and the other side meant ‘false’. Everyone had five seconds to run to the side of the room that they felt was correct for the fact that they had just heard. If they chose correctly, they stayed ‘in’. If they were incorrect they they were not immediately ‘out’, but they got one strike. If you got three wrong answers (three strikes) you were ‘out-out’.

By the end of Monkey Facts, anyone who wasn’t ‘out-out’ could go on to the final game.

Before ‘Monkey Facts’ started, Monkey June said that she needed something from her backpack. Once again, Carolyn and Marilyn convinced her that she didn’t have time to leave the game area.

The Monkey Facts competition started out exactly like you would think; a lot of kids choose ‘true’ or ‘false’ correctly after each fact was read, and a lot of kids chose incorrectly and got strikes. Some kids were given strikes for not going to the ‘true’ or ‘false’ area ‘monkey style’.

But then kids started to notice something. They noticed that there was one girl who always got the right answer. They noticed that if the fact was false, she always went to the ‘false’ side. If the fact was true, she always went to the ‘true’ side. She never hesitated. She was never wrong. Ever.

I’m sure you know who that girl was.

Some kids who already had two strikes started whispering to each other between facts. They decided that they would go wherever Monkey June went. They felt pretty sure if they did that they wouldn’t get any more strikes.

For the next three facts in a row, every single kid who was still ‘in’ went to the same side as Monkey June. Every single kid got the right answer.

The leader guy was confused. He asked the group, “How are you doing this? How are all of you getting every single one right?” The kids just shrugged like it was random luck and they didn’t know how it was happening.

Then they got to the last fact of the competition.

“White-faced Capuchin Monkeys say hello by sticking their fingers up each other’s noses,” the leader guy said.

No one moved.

“Five seconds!” he yelled out. “Four…three…”

All of the kids stood there—frozen. All of the kids looked at one girl. That’s when the leader guy figured it out; they were all waiting to see what that one girl would do.

Monkey June waited until the leader guy said ‘…two…’ and then she ran to the other side as fast as she could. Every kid chased after her the moment she made a move.

“Time!” the leader guy yelled. “Wow. You’re all standing on the ‘false’ side. Every single one of you. Interesting. Well, I’ve got bad news for you: that one’s true! White-faced Capuchin Monkeys really do say hello by sticking their fingers up each other’s noses. Every one of you gets a strike!”

“Hmm…” Monkey June said to Carolyn and Marilyn. “That’s one strike for me.”

For many of the other kids, that was their third strike and they were ‘out’. By following Monkey June to the ‘false’ side, they had lost.

Carolyn and Marilyn each got their second strike, so they were still ‘in’. Chill Phill and Ryan and Maisie had managed to stay ‘in’ as well. Monkey June and all of her friends would be going into the final game.

“How did you get that one wrong, Monkey June?” Ryan asked her. “I thought you knew everything about monkeys?”

“Oh, I knew it was true,” she answered. “That’s one of my favorite monkey facts. I just thought some of the other kids needed to learn a lesson about making decisions for themselves.”

I could try to describe the look of surprise on Ryan’s face when he heard that, but I think I’ll let you imagine it for yourself.

It was time for the final game: Tail Tag.

In the final round, tails were attached to everyone who was still ‘in’. The choir leader guy explained that as soon as he said ‘Weaeach!’ they would all run around like monkeys trying to tug the tails off of the other monkeys. If you lost your tail, you were ‘out’.

While they were getting their tails on, Monkey June and her friends had a little time to strategize.

“Stay near the edges of the room,” Monkey June suggested. “They can’t grab your tail very easily if your backside is close to the wall.”

“Good idea!” Carolyn said. “And keep moving.”

“If you’re moving, your tail is moving,” Marilyn agreed. “And it’s harder to grab if it’s all over the place.”

“Looks like some of these kids are taking a while to get their tails on,” Monkey June said. “I’ll be right back. I need to get something from my backpack.”

She ran off before any of her friends could stop her.

“Don’t worry,” Ryan said. “When I was ‘out’ I took care of… that thing that you asked me to do, Marilyn.”

“Thanks, Ryan,” Marilyn said.

Monkey June was back as quickly as she had run off.

“My backpack is missing!” she said.

“Time for the final round!” shouted the choir leader guy.

“I’m sure it’s over there somewhere,” Marilyn said. “We’ll find it after Tail Tag.”

“But I need it!” Monkey June said.

“For what?” Carolyn asked.

“Never mind;” Monkey June said, “the game is starting.”

The room became a madhouse (or perhaps I should say ‘monkey house’) of kids running this way and that with their monkey tails swinging everywhere. Several kids were almost immediately called ‘out’ when they started running like kids instead of running like monkeys. Soon, several more kids were out because they had focused too much on pulling other kids' tails and not on protecting their own tails.

Carolyn and Marilyn found Chill Phil on one side of the room after all three of them had lost their tails.

“Where’s Monkey June?” Chill Phil asked them. “I can’t see her anywhere out there.”

“I don’t know,” Marilyn said. “I don’t see her, either.”

The three of them were joined by Ryan and Maisie, and soon they were watching in disbelief as only three kids remained in the game—and Monkey June was not one of them!

“That is very strange,” said Carolyn.

A girl pulled off a boy’s tail and he was out. Now it was down to two girls. The same girl who had got the boy’s tail tugged the other girl’s tail, and it looked like the game had its winner. The girl immediately started monkey-dancing around with her hands up in the air, whooping and screeching like an overjoyed monkey.

She didn’t see what happened next because she was too busy celebrating. A silent figure hopped down from the top of a wooden shelf of cubbies along the wall on one side of the room behind the celebrating girl. The mysterious figure shot across the room like a monkey on a mission. It was another girl, and she was moving so fast (‘monkey style’, of course) that she almost looked like a blur.

With a terrifying monkey screech that sounded way more real than the one that the choir leader guy had been doing, she ducked into a monkey-roll behind the girl who thought she had won. Next thing you know she was holding the other girl’s tail in her paw. (I mean ‘hand’, but to everyone in the room it really felt like a real monkey had jumped down from the cubby shelf and won the game, so I’m probably not the only person who thought ‘paw’.)

“That’s Monkey June!” Carolyn shouted.

“Winner!” yelled the choir guy. Monkey June ran over and shared a few congratulatory hugs with her friends.

“Why were you up on that thing?” Ryan asked her.

“When monkeys are in danger, they climb,” she answered. “The rules said we had to do everything ‘monkey style’. I’m surprised no one was doing any climbing.”

The choir leader guy had an interesting point to share after the First Annual Kids' Choir Monkey Games, when the kids were all sitting in the Red Couch Area, resting from the competition.

“When a lot of you decided to start followed Monkey June—cool name, by the way— during ‘Monkey Trivia’—” he asked, “why did trust her monkey knowledge?”

A girl raised her hand and answered, “I learned the first time I met her that she’s really into monkeys.”

“Yeah,” a boy agreed. “She’s even got a monkey backpack.”

“It was obvious that she was the one to copy,” said another boy.

“Good observations,” the choir guy said. “And did you know that Jesus said there’s something about us that people will notice if we’re following Him?”

“That we go to church?” one girl guessed.

“That’s important—but that’s not the thing. Jesus said there was something that everyone would notice about us that would prove that we belong to Him.”

Monkey June raised her hand and the choir guy pointed to her.

“John 13:35,” she said.

“That’s it!” he said. “I don’t supposed you have that one memorized…”

“I do!” Monkey June said. “‘By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.'”

“That’s it!” he said again. “You need to come to Choir all the time, Monkey June! So just by looking at how loving we are towards one another, people should be able to tell that we follow Jesus, just as easily as you could tell who was the best monkey expert in the room.”

Later, as the kids were being picked up by their parents, Monkey June picked up her backpack.

“Seems odd that this was missing earlier, and then it was suddenly—not missing,” she said suspiciously.

“Well, we had a feeling that you might have something in there that caused a bit of a…scene…at Field Day last year,” Marilyn said, “and…we didn’t want…well…you didn’t even need it, so everything worked out fine.”

“You thought I had my monkey pillow in there?”

“Well, I mean…it seemed possible,” Carolyn said.

“I did go looking for it,” Monkey June admitted. “But my mom has it hidden so well that I can’t find it. I’m starting to think it’s not at my house at all. So, no, it’s not in my backpack. But you kept me from using this the whole time we were running around doing Monkey Games!”

She reached into her backpack and pulled out her monkey water bottle.

“I was so thirsty!” she said angrily.

“Good thing you didn’t get a drink,” Ryan said. “I saw two guys get ‘out’ because they went and got a drink and didn’t do it ‘monkey style’.”

“So it looks like we helped you stay in the Monkey Games by hiding your backpack!” Carolyn said proudly.

I could try to describe the look on Monkey June’s face when she heard that, but I think I’ll let you imagine it for yourself.