“Another rule for when we get a pet monkey is that if it’s ever sitting on the ceiling fan, we shouldn’t turn on the fan.”

Sonny added this rule to the list that he and Ace, ever the optimists, were evidently formulating, while I tried to even fathom such an idea. Pet monkey? What? No! No pet monkey, ever!

At the same time, I wasn’t sure that the acquisition of a pet monkey would alter our household as much as one might expect. This is probably not a good thing to admit, but it’s true. Just to check, I asked Sonny and Ace how they thought a life might be different if we acquired a monkey.

“A monkey would mess up the bathroom!”

Have they seen our bathroom lately? (I will spare you the details. You’re welcome.) Just last week I told J that cleaning the bathroom was the exemplification of futility.
“We would have to buy a lot of bananas.”

The large bunch of bananas I purchased five days ago lasted less than three days. Except, of course, the one with the squished top, and with our luck any monkey we adopted wouldn’t deign to eat it, either.

“It would play tricks on us.”

Yesterday Sonny called me over to (ostensibly) check out one of the perennials he was watering, and when I approached he gleefully sprayed me with the hose. The day before, Ace crouched in quiet wait behind the couch until I settled in with my book, at which time he leaped up and yelled “Boo!” Whenever we are waiting for a visitor, repairperson, or package delivery, one of the boys sneaks outside to ring the doorbell to prematurely lure me to the door.

“A monkey would make weird noises.”

This from the kid who talks like Minion for hours on end? His definition of “weird noises” must be much narrower than mine.

“A monkey would get dirty. All the time, it would be dirty.”

This summer’s go-to pastime is digging in the barren patch between the driveway and the flower bed. Sonny and Ace have carved out a large river system, complete with an island (with its own lake), and fill it with water almost daily. Don’t think for a second that my kids try to sidestep the resulting mud.

“We could teach it to do chores. But . . . maybe it wouldn’t want to do them, always.”

Ahem.

“We’d have lots of fun this summer if we had a monkey.”

Swimming lessons, days with cousins, VBS, camping, biking with friends to the park, visiting grandparents, the ice cream parlor, the library, Little League. Legos, Nerf guns, Elephant and Piggie, helpless laughter. Roasting marshmallows. Scooters, bikes. The beach, the splash pad, duct tape. Tickling contests. Digging in the dirt, spraying Mom with the hose.

My circus. My monkeys.

And they don’t even sit on the ceiling fan.

I’ll keep them.