Daddy-Monkey Dance (Daily Planet email #1044)

We are at the third annual Daddy-Monkey Dance. I’ve heard it said that as events go, this one is not as heartwarming or as nation-building as its more common cousin, but I find it enjoyable all the same. The monkeys are looking cute or at least amusing in their fancy get-ups and I can say from experience they are equally good at walking in high heels. And they make as big of a mess at the ice cream table. Can’t say if there are more or less biscuit crumbs on the tablecloths or floor, or in my hair. There may actually be more throwing of things, I couldn’t say. Who would dare put 120 young girls in a room to make sure?

Some of the fathers are at the bar so much, I imagine they don’t even notice who they’ve brought to the dance. Maybe at the photo setup they feel a little itchiness through their Dockers. Is that perhaps a faint feral smell on the bedside table boutonniere later that evening? And when the developed photos arrive in the mail, the fathers peer through their distraction to wonder — could it really be, am I losing that much hair?

Naturally the dance is pure chaos, I wouldn’t want it any other way. A pile of shoes and balloons and cookie shards line the too-small parquet floor. The fathers are doing their best haggard BMI chicken dance and I suppose, now that I think about it, girls don’t swing from chandeliers. Otherwise, it’s the same ribbons and hair a’flying, a formless joyful tumult, and when the eighteenth Taylor Swift song comes on, who could really tell a human shriek from a monkey screech?

Sure, I could use a rest. I think there’s some unspilt water over there. I lean on one of the tables where everybody is looking at their phones and catch my breath. While I’m inspecting the centerpiece debris, a rough and tiny paw drags me tenderly back to the floor. You got to dance with the one who brought you and so I am 100% team monkey. She’s getting so big!