When the Monkeys Start Talking

by Tracy Thompson

Communication with my daughter is becoming problematical. “Mom!” Emma exclaims suddenly from the back seat as we turn into Watkins Park, where her summer nature camp is held. “Did you know that something is destroying the river?” (We are passing over a small creek.)

“No,” I say.

“You know what it is?” No, I say.

“MELTED CHEESE!”

I collapse in giggles over the steering wheel, a menace to other drivers. “Well, it IS,” she tells me in a frosty tone, and I reflect sadly that, among other things, this child is unfamiliar with any cheese other than the artificially orange powdered stuff. Next thing I know, she is telling me that butterflies are poisonous. “Really?” I say skeptically. “Really, mom,” she assures me. “Like the Black Dancing Butterfly.”

“I gotta start writing this down,” I mutter.

“You’re gonna say where you heard it, right?”

“Oh, yeah,” I say. By now we are walking into the nature center. “I am definitely citing the source.”

“Mom,” she says impatiently, mistaking "source" for "forest," “the forest is right HERE.” I start laughing out loud; sometimes our conversations sound like they come straight out of a Zippy the Pinhead comic strip. She stops, lowering her head. “Mom,” she says through gritted teeth, “you are embarrassing me.”

“I’m sorry, sweetie,” I said. “I’ll stop.” I suppress my mirth until we get inside. The camp counselor greets me with a look I have come to recognize: so you're the one responsible for this kid. I hoped to get a private word with her but Emma rushes up between us.

“I’m going to see my cousin Addie tonight,” she says to Lisa, the counselor. “That’s nice,” Lisa says distractedly. Clearly she wanted a private word with me, but it is not to be.

I say, “We’ve been learning a lot of interesting things this week, haven’t we? Like, butterflies are poisonous.” I give Lisa a little of the old rolling eyeball. Lisa looks at me. “Yes,” she says evenly. “Monarch butterflies are poisonous to would-be predators.”

Well, shut me up. Not exactly the story I got, but I can see where Ems was coming from now. Emma smiles triumphantly. I realize that she has developed that most dangerous of traits—the ability to get the facts 50 percent correct, while maintaining a 100 percent belief in her own infallibility. The trouble with people who get half the facts right, though, is that you never know which half. I remember when she was about three and taking a bath, she kept calling me into the bathroom and saying, “Mom, the monkeys are talking.” “Yeah, yeah,” I’d say, thinking she was playing some imaginary game. Later on, when I was cleaning up her bath toys, I picked up some plastic monkeys which (unbeknownst to me) had a battery inside them. They emitted a high shriek in my hand and nearly gave me heart failure. The monkeys were talking.

On the way out of the park, I give that creek a good look, just to make sure nobody had dumped a package of Kraft Mac’n Cheese in there. So far as I could tell, it was just silt. I think.