Genital Mauling Chimpanzees

Many of you who know me know that I harbor a fear of chimpanzees.  Most people think of chimpanzees as funny little clowns, sometimes wearing a diaper, toddling about doing very funny things.

  I even admit that I laugh at commercials that feature chimpanzees.  But real chimpanzees are another matter entirely.

My fear of chimpanzees is based upon the fact that chimpanzees are...well...messed up in the head.  My first exposure to chimpanzees involved a field trip to the local zoo.  I was with the Catholic school nuns.  Sister Mary Hortense commented, "Ohhhh, look at the chimpanzees!!!!"  The chimp responded by crapping in his hand and throwing said clump at Sister Mary Hortense.  At the time I thought that the chimp must not have been a Catholic.

Whenever a chimpanzee goes on a rampage, they tend to do horrifying things, almost always involving ripping off someone's genitals and their face.  Why on earth would any creature rip off someone's genitals and face?  I thought I would find out.

So I wrote an email to the Philadelphia Zoo.  It started, "please answer an important question for me.  I would like to know why when a chimp gets furious it feels the need to rip the face and genitals off of it's enemy". Surprisingly, I still haven't heard a reply.  Perhaps this is a fact that they keep from the poor folks assigned to cleaning the chimp habitat.

If you think about it, there is little worse that you can do to fellow being than facial and genital mauling.  In fact, there are few cases where someone became so angry that they mauled the genitals off a fellow human, but it usually involved the misuse of said organ with another rival human.

People just don't get angry and act like chimpanzees do.  I don't care that they say chimps are the most similar to humans of all the creatures of the animal kingdom, we are not inclined to do such screwy and evil things.

A prime example is the true case of Ladonna and St.James Davis.  They went to see their chimp Moe at a chimp sanctuary for his birthday, and took him a birthday cupcake.  While they were giving Moe his cupcake, another chimp became jealous.  He burst out of his cage, grabbed St. James Davis, and, you guessed it, ripped off his face, fingers, and genitals.  Now I realize that it was a breech of etiquette to take one cupcake and not have cupcakes for all the chimps (I used it as a lesson for the girls, when you bring a cupcake for one, you bring one for EVERYBODY) however I feel that this was an overreaction on behalf of the offended chimp.

Poor Papi has listened to me preach about the terrors of chimpanzees for years.  So much so, that now I can tell he is a little uncomfortable on the subject of chimps.  He is very attached to his genitals, even more so than his face, I suspect.  In fact, when shopping for a weapon to defend the house, he walked right past the handguns and opted for a pump shotgun.

"Really, Papi? A shotgun?" I asked.  He looked at me as if I was an idiot.  "A shotgun will stop everything, Yvette."
I got the real meaning.
Everybody knows a handgun won't stop a marauding genital-mauling chimpanzee.  

Long Suffering Papi

It is one thing to have occasional arguments with your wife.  It is another thing altogether to have a wife who likes to cartoon you when she is angry.

  Many years ago when Papi and I were first married, our arguments were uncomplicated.  For example, if he would try to give me directions from a map if I was spelling him at driving, I would just react immediately.

Over the many years I became adept at cartooning Papi.  This had major drawbacks anytime we had a major fight.  The first one was when we were watching the movie "Gorillas in the Mist".

Shortly thereafter, our oldest daughter was obsessed with the little mermaid.  Soooo....

He worked for 20 years as a produce manager.  

And sometimes he just pissed me off in general.

All told this poor man has been drawn in horrible ways for decades.  However, it is not always without reason because although he is a wonderful man and a great father, occasionally he can actually act like, well, like any man, an asshole.

And everyone should understand that he gets me back in his own special ways.  A good example is when Papi decides he is going to make beef stew for everyone.

But even then, he is my Papi and I love him. After so many years, and so many cartoons, he still has a sense of humor about it.  And I look forward to growing old with him...

And drawing him for many more years.

Right, honey?    

What is relaxing?

Relaxing has always been difficult for me.  People know that my general affect is that of just having been shot out of a cannon, and in the past year I have noticed that stress is really starting to get to me.  The first sign was that I was smoking more.  A lot more.  I had purchased an electric cigarette to quit smoking and found I was only using it where smoking was not allowed so I could just keep on smokin.

The next sign was that I found that I was holding my breath for no good reason every time I was faced with any kind of stress.

To cap it off, I noticed that suddenly I was not sleeping as well as I used to.  I would find myself counting down the hours left until I had to wake up in the morning, sometimes getting to an hour and a half before finally dozing off.  So I decided to try meditation.  Bought several books, tapes, and even a silly DVD.  Nothing worked.  I kept thinking too hard.

Additionally every time I would lay down I would have to worry about Papi.  I'll just leave it at that.

So I decided I would adopt Eastern Philosophies and become a relaxed and zen individual.  I started by studying the writings of the Dalai Lama.  Then he stated publicly that he was philosophically was a socialist.  That was the end of that.

Tried to do yoga.

Went to a class, and couldn't focus because I was watching everyone else, and was annoyed if people made noises. (yoga should be silent.  At least that's what I think). Then I got into an argument with a guy in my yoga class because he kept crowding me.  Got asked to leave by the instructor for not having a peaceful affect.  That was the end of that.

Had a good friend ask me along on an African safari. Thought about it.

That was the end of that.

Part of the problem is that I go places that aspire to meditation and I don't look like anybody else.  They are all super natural people, wearing hemp clothes and wicker sandals.  I arrive looking, well, like me.  Makeup, hair, designer yoga pants, and matching top.  I have tried to do the natural look.

Couldn't get out the door.

At this point I think I have to just accept I am pathologically incapable of relaxing at all.

Perhaps someday being shot out of a cannon will be something people aspire to.

Big Chested? Not me.

I have wanted a large chest from a pretty young age.  On TV and ads, big boobs were everywhere.  It was after all, a mans world back then.

I realized I had a problem when I was about fourteen, and all my friends had boobs but me. I was trapped in what was then called a starter bra, which was essentially a bra that could be worn on a boy it was so flat.  It was different from regular bras because it had a pink bow in the center.  That pink bow was a BOW OF SHAME.  If you were fourteen and still sporting the pink bow your prospects in the boob department were grim.  I tried to remove the pink bow in the hopes of losing the stigma, but the manufacturers had used a space age thread and polymer that affixed that bow PERMANENTLY.

All my teenage friends had big ones.  It seemed that when God was handing out the boobs I was holding the door.  

When I was around eighteen, I took a job as a lifeguard at a local beach.  All the girl lifeguards were stacked but me.  Mine were only big enough so you could tell I was not a boy, and I was convinced no one wanted to be saved by a small chested girl.  I only got old people that were nearly drowning, none of the young guys splashing around like the other girls.

Got married, had kids, and forgot about boobs for a while (breastfeeding actually worked, the kids didn't starve to death, or look at them questioningly as a food source) but at around thirty I began to focus on them again.  I really wanted to buy some, but they were so expensive.

 It still seemed that girls with big chests just had more fun.

So I did the next best thing.  I bought these little "cookies" you could put in a bra and they made my little girls seem bigger and perkier.  They were fraught with disaster, however.
They had a nasty habit of flying out of my bra if I had on a low cut shirt and was doing anything strenuous.  The worst incident was when I was working on a gravely ill man as a nurse in the ER, and one cookie flew out of my scrub top and plopped on his chest while everyone was working on him.  Everyone stopped a moment, (I think they thought it was an organ, as it was flesh colored) and for lack of anything better to do, I snatched it off the mans chest and put it in my pants pocket.  Everyone then resumed trying to save the mans life.  Ultimately the man didn't survive, and neither did the cookies.  They are in the corner of a panty drawer, laughing at me.

So now I am in my mid forties and find that some part of me still thinks about it.  I am convinced that they will (combined with hair extensions and a tummy tuck) make me the most attractive middle aged woman on earth.  or at least on my street.

So for now I shop at Victorias Secret and dream of someday having absolutely  fantastic ones.  I need to hurry though.  I am worried that by the time I finally get them, I will look like an old broad with a coconut bra.

One can but dream.

The National Spelling Bee

When I was a little girl,I was a spelling champion.  Every day I went happily to school and studied with the sisters to improve my spelling for my competitive spelling bees.

After much time studying and beating other local schools, I learned that I was chosen by the school to represent it in the National Spelling Bee.  This was the greatest thing ever.

My father was overjoyed and talked about it for days, and had even taken the day off to drive me to the spelling bee.  While in the car, he gushed, "Yvette, this is a great honor for the family.  I came to this country and had to learn the language, and now my daughter is in the National Spelling Bee!  We called all our relatives to let them know.  This is an amazing thing and I am so proud of you!!

I was over the moon.  Once arriving at the venue, I was assigned a placard with my name on it and the name of my school. We were all up on a stage, and how it worked was that you waited your turn on the stage.  Once on the stage the moderator would call out a word to you, and you had to spell it back.  If you got it right they would ding a hotel bell, but if you got it wrong, there was a humiliating buzzer that went on entirely too long. (I suspect the moderator was a sadist).

Finally it got to be my turn, and I walked up confidently to the podium.  The moderator called out the following word....

LIAISON (pronounced lee-ay-zon)

I had not seen this word on any of the lists, nor did I, as a sixth grader, even know what it meant.  So I started:  L-E-A-Z-O-N .  BUZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ.

Crestfallen, I walked with bowed head back to the car.  My father walked silently beside me.  However, once we got in the car, he exploded.

"LIAISON!!!!!LIAISON!!!! HOW COULD YOU MISS LIAISON??? I AM AN IMMIGRANT AND EVEN I KNOW HOW TO SPELL LIAISON!!!!YOU HAVE EMBARRASSED ME IN FRONT OF EVERYBODY!!!DIDN'T YOU EVEN STUDY AT ALL???"

I didn't respond, I just sat, feeling miserable the whole way home.  Once home, I shuffled up to my room and shut the door.

Moments later, I had a soft knock at the door.  It was my little brother, and he peeked his head in.

"HA! I HEARD YOU BLEW IT ON THE FIRST ROUND!!!!LIAISON!!!!THIS IS GREAT!!!!HAHAHAHAHAHA!"

Before I knew it, I had grabbed a saddle shoe (we wore them to school) and had hurled it at my brother.

  Much to my surprise, it clocked him in the nose and he suddenly had a fountaining nosebleed as a result.

"MMMMOOOOOOMMMMMMMMM!!!" he wailed.

I then proceeded to get the beating of my life.  And I was told I was going to go straight to hell if I ever hit my little brother like that again.

L-I-A-I-S-O-N.  It is my Rosebud.