Pouring My Art Out

As you know, I am just about ready to publish my first children’s book. There is a story about how this book came about. It is based on the answers given to me by kids when I tell them that I like monkeys. I have been compiling these answers for years, and decided to share the best of them with some original paintings to go with them.

My older daughter is coming to visit next month and she is going to help me get it ready to publish. I wanted to stick this story about how the book came about at the end of the book so parents would have something to read too. She says it is too long and doesn’t work in a kid’s book. So I am going to share it with you to get your opinion.

————-

I Like Monkeys

The origins of a children’s book

For the past 20 some odd years I have been, unbeknownst to myself, involved in a sociological research study. A psychological, observational evaluation of how modern society molds the minds of our children and turns our youngest members, over the course of years, into those much less interesting entities known as adults.

I have always been fascinated by children. I love kids. I relate to them. This point was brought forcefully home to me when Jessica, my eldest daughter, was still very young. Her preschool took a class field trip to Sea World. We have gone to Sea World lots of times over the years, although I have very mixed feelings about the place. But as a stay at home dad, I volunteered to help. We got there early, before the park was open to the public, and they escorted us all to the dolphin tank. I have always loved these adorable creatures, and there is something about seeing them in captivity that sets my teeth on edge. They don’t look unhappy, but with those cute smiles and tendency to frolic, how could you tell? The tank is not very big, about the size of an Olympic swimming pool, I guess. They want the dolphins to never be too far from the guests, who lure them over with fish you buy from a vendor. The pool has rocks and plants, and clear plastic walls that curve slightly over the tank. You can crouch down and see them right through the walls when they are under the water.

During the later parts of the day, the dolphins get a little tired of all the screaming tourists trying to pet them, and just sort of circle the center of the pool once they have had their fill of fish. But in the morning, still hungry and full of energy, they were going wild. It was something to see. It was amazing. There were perhaps ten dolphins in this little pool, just playing like a pack of puppies, leaping and chasing each other around. Some just swam in circles as fast as they could go, and that is pretty darn fast. They were just enjoying being alive… like kids do.

I had a brief moment of stupidity. I wanted to share the moment with someone who had an adult’s vocabulary, so I could verbalize the joy I was feeling, and my sorrow that the dolphins had to be confined for our enjoyment. So I glanced around to see what the other parents were doing. Now, don’t get me wrong. I liked some of these people, and they were just fine as parents, for the most part. They were here with their kids on a field trip. I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised to see them all chatting and sipping their Starbuck’s coffee, or talking on their cell phones. Not one adult was even looking at the dolphins… or their own kids watching the dolphins. They all had adult things on their minds.

And I admit, I got a little angry. Humans had gone out in boats and captured these beautiful, wild animals, then stuck them in a freekin’ fishbowl for our entertainment, and these ‘adults’ couldn’t even be bothered to pay them any attention. ‘Oh, I’ve seen dolphins before’, seemed to about sum up their level of interest.

Then, from where I was crouched on one knee by the wall of the tank, I cast a glance to either side of me. There were all the kids, each and every one with hands and face pressed against the plastic, eyes wide in joy, just to see these animals playing. They knew about playing. They knew about just letting go and feeling the moment. They knew about racing to nowhere in particular to feel free. They knew about life.

It dawned on me that adults, with all the words in the world, had nothing to say to me that I needed or wanted to hear. And I had nothing to say to them that wouldn’t sound just a little angry at that point.

And I realized, although I had always known it deep down, that at that moment, I was with my people.

My experiment into the slow slide from open-minded wonder into the eventual perhaps productive but much less amusing adulthood began as a simple conversational gambit. As previously stated, I have always liked kids. Even before I had my own kids I found that I related to any child that I met on an instinctual level. Kids are just fun to talk to. Everything is a miracle to children. And babies… don’t get me started on babies. Over the years I have developed a repertoire of funny sounds and gestures and tricks just to get a laugh out of any new little friend that I might meet.

I always start by shaking hands in a rather vigorous manner and saying, “Arthur Browne, darn glad to meet you.” Younger children and even babies particularly enjoy this, and have been known to stick their hands out 40 or 50 times with no sign of getting bored. And almost always, the next time I see them, they stick their hands out in anticipation that I will once again shake it 40 or 50 times or more if required. And you know what? I always do. This willingness is taken for granted by children, they not being aware that most adults would find this tedious. Fortunately I have not yet succumbed to the ravages of adulthood, even though I am over 50 years of age.

Somewhere along the line I developed the habit, randomly and for no apparent reason, of saying to kids the following:

“I like monkeys.”

I never planned it or threw it in during any particular part of the conversation. I just liked it because it was silly, and I enjoyed saying it with a very serious tone of voice and a solemn look on my face as though it were important and relevant information. Inside I was giggling to myself, and in my semi-adult conceit I was thinking, ‘Ha, you weren’t expecting that, were you?’

But I began to notice a very strange thing. It is not so easy to throw the average child off stride. Random changes of direction do not faze them because that is how their minds work. Now granted, some kids will just nod in agreement, equally as serious as I pretend to be, as though I had just stated an obvious but still pertinent truth. I mean really, who doesn’t like monkeys? But more often than not, without batting an eye, and with absolutely no time given to mull the subject over, they come back with counterstatements that rock my quasi-grownup world view to the core. And I am forced once again to concede the fact that children are an awesome force of nature, and we should stop ruining them by turning them into non children.

As an example I will now cite on of my favorite philosophical displays of the child thought process. This one made it into the book. The conversation took place with a girl in my younger daughter’s preschool class.

Me: “I like monkeys.”

Her: “Oooh, what about space monkeys?”

Me: “Wait, you mean monkeys from outer space, like green alien monkeys, or monkeys that work for NASA?”

I had already lost all control of that conversation. I was out of my league. In one sentence, with no time to overanalyze my comment, she had so confounded the adult portion of my brain that I felt I need time to regroup. I needed a do-over. Or an adult beverage. Why are we actively attempting to force children to paint inside the lines until that quality of insight and imagination is sublimated and atrophied and stagnated? I believe we do a disservice to ourselves and an injustice to the children.

Over the last few years, in an effort at fairness, I have begun to tell adults with whom I have been thrown into conversation, that I like monkeys. Most often, this comment is ignored. Sometimes the adult recipient of this information will look put out or even slightly nervous about my mental state, even though many of them are people I have known for some time and I do have something of a reputation for being somewhat offbeat. Once in a while I get a tacit agreement, usually with a slightly condescending overtone that yes, monkeys are okay. But for the most part, grownups just want that part of the conversation to quickly pass and be forgotten.

And yet not once, when encountering the knowledge that I like monkeys, has a child glanced at their watch or looked around the room as though they had a more important conversation waiting for them somewhere else.

These are my people.

Let’s try not to mess them up.

———————————–