The Monkey Prince

There he is. My eldest monkey, or as I like to refer to him, the Monkey Prince. He's 17 years old. Doesn't he have nice eyes? I just found this photo of him on MySpace. I'd link the URL, but the language he uses burned my eyes when I read it. Oh! The pain!
Regardless, I have to say, the child has an incredible sense of humor. He gets it from me, I'm sure. He also gets his amazing good looks from me. He's very strange, though. Very, very strange. My husband tells me that the eldest monkey gets his strange personality from me, as well. Well, perhaps this is very true.
A blog war is about to begin, I'm afraid. The Monkey Prince told me that I could not post comments on his MySpace blog. He must have thought there was some Star Wars type security attached. It didn't take me long to figure it out. I've posted a comment on his site. Perhaps it will be only a matter of time before he and his friends try to insert their comments here. But that's o.k. I love to hear the opinions of young people. I especially love to hear from my sweet son's friends. Anyone who recognizes him as the unique, talented individual that he is has got to be a wonderful person, too. But then, I've never met anyone who could hate that child.
So let me give a brief history of the Monkey Prince. He was born on April 13, 1988. This is a significant date as his father is a C.P.A. April 13 is NOT the day to try to call a C.P.A. away from his desk to attend to the birth of a child. Yet, he did come to my side eventually. He came home to take me to the hospital, ran about the house, and then went and sat in the car in the driveway. He honked the horn for me to hurry up. Where was I? Sitting in the house trying to get my shoes on my feet -- in labor, with 9 months worth of baby crammed inside of me! Yet somehow the pain tore my focus away from the anger I felt toward my husband, and by 6:58 a.m. there was my beautiful little son in my arms. His father, who had barely uttered a word throughout the entire delivery, suddenly sprang to life upon hearing that he had a son. I remember clearly the doctor looking directly at me and asking, "What's his name." Not a heartbeat passed before I heard my husband declare, "He's Charles Patrick IV". The fourth??? This from the man who said he'd never name a child Charles. The fourth? But the look on my husband's face was unbelievable. Such happiness! Such a glow! How could I argue with that? I only insisted that we use the name Patrick for our little monkey princeling. Naming four people in generational succession seemed to me to be a testament to male ego. But at that point, I was too tired to argue.
So there he was, my little monkey prince. He opened his eyes, and there they were. Those clear, clear blue eyes, ringed with a darker shade of blue. Nurses came from all over the ward to see his eyes. He was so very beautiful. People looked through the window of the nursery, pointed at him and remarked that he was the most beautiful child they had ever seen. Such an angel! And such a good baby he was! He only cried when he wanted to eat. He pulled people into his charismatic circle from the moment he was born. Such promise comes into the world with the firstborn. New parents don't know what to expect. They think their child will be beautiful, smart, successful, loved by everyone. Who wouldn't gaze upon the child and feel grateful to God for this wonderful gift.
Ahh, but before long, we were living in the real world. We had 13 months of unbroken heaven-on-earth. Monkey Island appeared to be a paradise. But then, the Monkey Prince turned into a tantrum-throwing maniac. I don't know why. He was never dropped on his head or anything. Well, there was that time in the pool when Uncle George carried the child on his shoulders while making a whirlpool. He had no idea that the boy had thrown himself backwards and had his head underwater. We called attention to that fact very quickly, but perhaps some brain damage occurred. We may never know.
Whatever happened at 13 months of age, the child decided that his will be done. And only his will. Constant screaming and full-fledged tantrums erupted from this little angel. Thus he began to develop the first jungle noise verbalizations. Into this world, came our second monkey princeling in May of 1990. I will certainly write more about him in the next post. But from the first Monkey Prince's perspective, the arrival of his little brother was a wonderful thing. He loved his baby brother. He wanted him in the crib with him. He talked to him, cooed to him, and a little later was happy to help feed his little brother from a spoon. But now there were two little monkeys on the island, and the monkey behavior came fully into play once the baby became mobile. The eldest monkey gradually left his tantrums behind, and substituted more creative activities. I have to admit that I have some very funny memories. One of my favorites was the time I walked into the nursery to check on what I thought were two napping toddlers. I opened the door to see the eldest monkey drawing happy faces on the baby monkey's bald little head -- with an indelible laundry marker. I don't think I was thrilled at the time, but we certainly laugh about it today.
Gradually the Monkey Prince grew into an interesting character. He learned to read by the age of 3 and was awarded a scholarship to a private kindergarten. We were sure he was the most wonderful child to ever be born to two mortal human beings. With complete confidence we looked into the future and saw him graduating at the top of his class, everyone in the crowd jumping to their feet in standing ovation at commencement. Ha! I now take comfort in the fact that Albert Einstein and Bill Gates were horrible students. Everyone loved the Monkey Prince, everyone but his teachers, that is. At the local public school, his first grade teacher once called me in for a conference in response to a booklet Monkey Prince had prepared entitled "My Family". He had drawn each of his family members and written short sentences about our interactions. The first few pages showed us playing games together, having dinners together, singing songs together. There was a drawing of me baking cookies for the family, a wide smile on my stick figure face. I was so pleased! The Waltons looked positively dysfunctional compared to us! But then I turned to the very last page. There was a picture of my husband. A grand stick figure of a man, drawn sitting at his computer, a wide balloon floating over his head, and inside the balloon our son had written with his best first-grade spelling skills the word that his father often spoke while seated at the computer: "BICH!" Perhaps everything would have been o.k. if I hadn't laughed so loudly. I mean, c'mon! It was funny! I mean, it was really, really, really funny! The teacher was not pleased, however. She suggested family counseling. Now, don't get me wrong! I wasn't pleased that our little princeling had picked up and used Kong's angry expletive. We did address that at home. I just thought a teacher conference about it was over-the-top.
It got only more interesting as the years went on. There were teacher conferences because the Monkey Prince would not sit still in class, he didn't do his homework, he laughed too loudly, walked too quickly, played with items on the science cart next to his desk, etc., etc. In those days, teachers could just blurt out, "Your child needs to be on Ritalin." And if you said, "No, thank you," then the principal and school district psychologist would call you to special conferences and say, "Your child needs to be on Ritalin." Finally I said, "My child needs to be in Catholic school."
Off the Monkey Prince went to our local parish school. He was so adorable in his uniform. I'm quite sure there were plenty of teachers at the Catholic school who wouldn't have minded seeing the Monkey Prince on a Ritalin intravenous drip, too. But, they were accepting of our decision not to medicate. They didn't take any crap from anyone either. The Monkey Prince seemed to do better, although he still rarely completed homework unless influences external to his own mind were exerted upon him.
Let me say this about my firstborn son. He's remarkable. He's a genius, I think. He's unbelievably talented and has such an imagination! I save his stories, the poems he's written, the pictures he's drawn, the fantastic cartoons he invents. I'm confident that he makes wise and moral decisions about 98 percent of the time. He's far better than I am at seeing the good in people. I can't tell you how much I admire him for seeing the dignity in other human beings. I often have a hard time doing that. But my eldest son rarely says anything even remotely negative about anyone. I would also like to make this announcement: In his 12th year of school, the Monkey Prince has finally, yes finally made it to the honor roll! Second honors! I absolutely screamed when I heard it! I'm so happy that I don't even mind having to wait this long.
I hope you've stayed with me this long. I promise that once I get through these first few posts introducing you to my monkeys, I'll be more brief. Please come back soon for the next message cast from the shores of Monkey Island.