Circus Monkeys and Gimpel the Fool; Lessons From My Father
Circus Monkeys & Gimpel the Fool; Lessons From My Father ©
“When I was in the service,” my father said, “we were working with monkeys,and the Officer in charge said, ‘Some of these monkeys are old circus monkeys’ and then he lit up a cigarette and handed it to one of the orangutans, and dammit if the monkey didn’t take the cigarette and smoke it for himself, and the Officer says, ‘See, circus monkey knows how to smoke a cigarette, that’s how you can tell.’” As a small child, I just thought it was a funny story about a monkey who smoked cigarettes. As a tween, I didn’t understand why the United States Army had my father smoking cigarettes with an orangutan during the Vietnam War. I don’t know exactly when (or how) I figured it out, but what it was is this...my father has a degree in biology, so the army stuck him in a lab rather than on the killing field, and the orangutan he smoked cigarettes with was his test subject rather than his pet. What were father and his teammates testing on their subjects...he never said, but if I had to guess, I’d say nerve gas. Yes, father’s funny story about a cigarette-smoking monkey is actually more monstrous than laughable...it’s really the story of how father treated the monkey like a buddy (sharing cigarettes with it as if it were an old pal) before he gassed it to death.
When I was in college, father gave me a copy of Isaac Bashevis Singer’s “Gimpel the Fool,” and when I’d read it, he asked me, “Well, what d’you think was Gimpel’s problem?” And I said, “His friends were assholes, they lied in his face and manipulated him.” And father asked, “But WHY, Cara, why did they lie to him and manipulate him?” I said, “Because they were malicious,” but that wasn’t good enough, father wanted to know WHY they were so easily able to manipulate Gimpel. The answer to that, of course, is that Gimpel was gullible. He believed everything everybody told him.
My father was a teacher...he taught high school for 35 years, then retired from the Board of Education & was an adjunct lecturer at Long Island University’s Brooklyn Campus for 15 years. He taught the “natural sciences,” biology, anatomy, and earth science, in the classroom.
At home, father was my teacher. He taught me to read the funny papers, and by the time I was 6 years old, i could read the funny papers to Drea and Lulu. By the time I was in high school, I would start each day by reading the whole New York Daily News.
Father taught me to ride a bike, jogging beside me up and down 81st Street, always ready to catch me in the event I lost my balance. He taught me to drive in an ‘87 Cutlass Supreme. I won’t say driving lessons were a disaster, but it did take me THREE tries to pass my road test. That didn’t matter, though. Father kept at it till I passed. During the course of my illustrious driving career, I crashed several of father’s cars, but he didn’t care. His car was always mine to use as I pleased.
Father taught me about politics as well. He’s a Conservative who believes Regan was “good for the economy”, and a MAGAt who thinks Donald Trump is the greatest president of all time. Despite father’s Conservativism, I grew up to become a liberal Democrat with socialist leanings. But i do believe, as father does, that politics is important. That it MATTERS who we elect.
During the Trump presidency, father and i often had political arguments. Loud, expletive-filled political arguments, during which father would call me every name under the sun. But no matter how much verbal abuse he would hurl at me, I stuck to my convictions.
Father taught me many lessons, but none so important as those of the circus monkey & Gimpel the Fool.
From the story of the circus monkey, I learnt that there are monsters who would play at being my friend in order to gain my trust, all so they could hurt me, and that father himself was capable of such monstrousness (he never hurt us, but by his own admission he treated his test subject like a pal before gassing it to death).
And from Gimpel the Fool, I learnt that being gullible was a weakness,& one others would look to exploit if they saw it within me.
Grazie, papa, per tutto quello che mi hai insegnato
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