The Curious George Lost Episode
I don't remember the last time that I brushed my teeth. I don't know why this bothers me, either. It just does. Well, that and I'm the son of a dentist. When I was a kid, I hoped to grow up in my father's footsteps, but once I had my first cavity, I felt that I failed him. I ended up becoming a zookeeper instead, because I love animals. ...Ha, yeah, very funny. You know what I mean!
One day, I was eating a banana and pondering the meaning of life when something dawned on me: I was alone. No matter how intimately close I could get to someone physically or emotionally, I would always be alone. This realization led me to detachedly study the animal life of the place, until I...well, I started loving one of the animals. ...Ha, yeah, very funny. You know what I mean!
It was just me, a humble Ohian man, alone with my favorite non-human primate. Or maybe all primates period! We hung out a lot together, entertaining the kids with our public displays. They'd giggle with laughter, though I didn't always understand why. Well, until I realized that my gorilla pal was saying "I'm with stupid!" in sign language. I asked him about it. He said he was joking. No big deal, I guess. After all, we were intimate pals. ...Ha, yeah, very funny. You know what I mean!
I found meaning in life from the big, hairy guy, but...one day, he was gone. Nobody told me why. They said that everyone, everywhere already knew.
I asked my boss where my buddy had gone, but all he did was tear up and say that nobody could ever know. At least in this life. I demanded a better answer out of him, and instead of give me a verbal response, he handed me a DVD case. 'Curious George in: Too Much Monkey Business.' I didn't know whether to thank him or ask him more questions until I got a definitive reply. Raging with the fire of a hundred thousand suns, I stormed out of his office and popped the disc into the zookeeper break room's DVD player. Could a children's cartoon truly explain to me where my favorite pal had gone?
I immediately recognized the man in the yellow hat. He was known as 'The Man in the Yellow Hat'. He was helping an old lady cross the street, in a demonstration to George about how to act like a responsible grown-up. Of course, instead of observe and learn, George was getting into his usual chimpy antics. He was at a hot dog stand, shoveling hot dogs down his mouth and shooting mustard into his mouth in a way that seemed inappropriate for children. I would have ultimately ignored it, but then...I heard something that I *never* would have expected to hear in a children's television program. It was the voice of Emeril Lagasse! "Aw yeah, babe!", he exclaimed while George scarfed down the snacks like a teenager who had smoked one too many joints! This was... strange!
"George, cut out that shit.", said Yellow Hat, in a rude New Yorker accent. That wasn't family friendly at all! "You know the rule. Eat of the pig and spend an eternity in Limbo with LBJ."
I know I wouldn't want to spend an eternity in Limbo with LBJ, but still—why politics in a PBS kids show? "Fucking Democrats!", Yellow Hat continued. "They take our jobs, fuck our jobs, shit out our jobs, take our women, and by the way, you're fat and you smell very bad." ... Hm. Well, I had to admit that that last part was true.
I decided to go take a shower before finishing watching the disc. I know this is bizarre, but my body wash smelled of hot dogs. I had never bought hot dog scented body wash before, so this was some sort of inexplicable supernatural occurrence. After scrubbing my privates with a hand towel, I eyed my Mickey Mouse toothbrush and thought a lot about dad. If he was still alive, he would be greatly ashamed that I hadn't become a dentist, I thought. I'm not sure why, but I grabbed the brush and carried it with me back downstairs before pushing play on the DVD player again.
This time, Curious George was at school. Yellow Hat was arguing with George's teacher. "Evolution? My son is a monkey!", Yellow Hat exclaimed. "You expect me to believe that he popped out of a human lady's vagina?". ...O.K., this was getting weird.
I put the tape/disc back on pause and drove to the local library. I checked Charles Darwin's 'The Descent of Man' off of the shelves and started to read. As expected, there were no passages about human women giving birth to chimpanzee babies. ... Strange.
When I got home, I skipped supper in favor of continuing to watch the show. This time, George and The Man were in George's bedroom. It was decorated like a normal, human kid's bedroom, with rocketships and baseball gloves. This seemed relatively O.K. for this program, until... until things got really disturbing.
Yellow Hat was crying. His eyes were flooded with tears. His hat was slightly tipped, as if to express a state of mourning. I felt really uncomfortable watching this scene. Yellow Hat had put Curious George to bed, covers over him and everything, but there were no bedtime stories. Just a pregnant pause. Something was clearly wrong.
"George.", the Man managed to say between sobs. "I just want you to know that I love you. I don't care that we're different species. I raised you to be my son. Even... even if I'm not your... biological father." Those last 2 words were said with soap opera drama, as if we weren't supposed to figure that on our own.
I scratched my head. Kinda like a monkey, I guess. I got up to turn off the program, but before I could... the episode changed to a news show anchor.
"We interrupt this program for a special news bulletin.", the man explained. "A Jacksonville man has performed an unorthodox criminal act this morning, as the prize chimpanzee 'Georgio' was stolen from his exhibit in a gunpoint robbery. Little is known of his current whereabouts. He was last heard shouting, 'Judy, if you won't give me a son!!!".
I spit up. My Mickey Mouse toothbrush was planted firmly in my mouth until that scene. But someway, somehow—even though I wasn't using toothpaste—my tastebuds could sense the presence of a hot dog flavor. ... I was scared.
The following morning, I marched back into my boss's office, and slammed the Curious George DVD case onto his desk. "Is this your sick attempt at humor?", I asked with disdain. He started to cry, and I felt really bad, so I apologized. "I want to show you something", he responded.
We walked upstairs to his bedroom (he lived out of his zoo office.) It was... unkempt. Banana peels all over the floor. He reached for a photo holder and handed it over to me. "I want to show you something.", he insisted.
It was my boss, and he was holding a baby chimpanzee. "Cute.", I remarked. "Look a little closer.", he implored. "I want to show you..."
At first, I didn't notice it, but I put on my Buddy Holly glasses and stared closer, inches away from the mysterious photograph. My boss...he was wearing a yellow hat!
"Now do you see?", he sighed. "They took my baby away, Elliot." I... I couldn't believe it! My boss...was THE man in the yellow hat!! "I'm also the Jacksonville gunman, Elliot. And now that you know the truth...I'm afraid that I can't let you leave." I shrieked horrifically as I prepared to make escape, but I slipped on a banana peel and fell downstairs.
I had fallen head first. My face was numb. I knew that the man in the yellow hat would be on me in moments. And there he was...with a pillow in his hands. It had rocketships and baseball gloves decorated all over it. "George would've wanted it this way.", he asserted. "He wouldn't wanted to protect daddy."
The man in the yellow hat was smothering me. I was running out of air. The world was all black. I tried punching, kicking, whatever, but it was to no avail. I was going to die. Cause of death: banana peel.
I tried imagining a better world, in my mind. A world in which Jacksonville man still had his monkey baby, and he wasn't currently choking me to death. Quite literally on my last legs, I squirmed the little that yellow hat would let me, and I kicked as hard as I could...
There was a thud. A slight one, but I could hear it. I had struck pay dirt. "HEY!!!", he screamed. The Curious George DVD disc rolled on the floor, perhaps getting dirty and scratched! "That's all I have left of him!".
I jumped on my feet and ran as fat as I could. At this point, the world had turned red from all the flood pouring down my face. Yellow hat had foolishly left the front door open! I ran through the zoo park, puddles of blood oozing from my face. Children screamed. Fathers shouted expletives. "Dude, this is pretty fucked up right here", I overheard. But I was free...
I stopped at Burger King on the way home. I used some fast food napkins to wipe down the blood. The cashier gave me a look like I was a ghost. "Extra ketchup", I joked. He didn't seem to get it, but that was O.K. I ordered a whopper dog and tipped him the change.
When I got home, I checked my favorite news website, foxnews.com. Unsurprisingly, my ex-boss (it's not like he'd rehire me without killing me first) was in the news. There wasn't much said about the bloody dude racing his way to freedom, though I did get mentioned. They didn't give out my name, though. They probably didn't know it because I wasn't the one who called the cops, and I got out of there ASAP. Oh well. Maybe my bloody zoo run would go viral, anyway.
As it turns out, yellow hat was indeed Jacksonville man. It was mentioned that it was amazing that another incident had occurred after what happened to my friend. Turns out that a kid fell into his living area, and yellow hat had our hairy buddy killed. He couldn't live with the pain, and he went mad. Had cooked up a racist conspiracy about immigration. Said Democrats with pneumonia had kidnapped Harry to take some Thetan readings on Charlie Manson's ranch or some shit. Whatever. Either way, I had lost the best friend I ever had. And my job.
As for me now? I turned my house into a dentist's office. I don't have a license, but no one's investigated me yet, so hey. Dad would be proud—and in that moment, I realized what the Curious George episode meant.
You see, we all evolved from monkeys. Actually, that's not true: we share common ancestors with monkeys, according to Darwin's theory. Which means that we're all relatives, but we're also very distant. I mean, most people would take offense at the suggestion that they're related to a monkey, right?
Yet, I loved Harry. And so did my boss. We were both humans who took care of the same gorilla. But what do I know? I thought a chimpanzee was a gorilla, and I worked at a zoo. That chimp in the photograph wasn't Harry, and he was a closer blood relative to Harry than humans like yellow hat and I were, right? Yet we loved him. Yet...we loved him.
Who was Georgio? Who was the they who took him? I did some Googling and Yahooing. Made some calls. My research led me to NBC Universal Television Distribution. I took a vacation from my dentist job and flew out to their HQ in Manhattan, New York. When I talked to the secretary, she thought I was crazy. I told her to call her boss and the truth would come out, or I'd buy her a Coney Island hotdog. Several hours later, I was invited to peel myself off the waiting room couch. I was escorted to the office of NBC TD's CEO, Stephen B. Burke.
When I mentioned that I worked for Jacksonville man, Burke's face turned beet red. "That's the Reys' business!", he exclaimed. Turns out that they created the Curious George children's book series.
I paid for the secretary's hot dog, knowing that I had at least temporarily lost the bet. Luckily, this loss turned into a great gain: on our Coney Island date, I investigated her Sherlock Holmes style for any information I could get on the Reys. Gulping down a condiment-covered 'gulp!', I got her to spill the beans: Rey was a pseudonym, and the creators of Curious George had long since retired to the Florida keys. Florida... ... ... Jacksonville man?
The Jacksonville Zoo and Gardens sit at the mouth of the Trout River. Fitting, given that there was something fishy about all this. I flew there from Manhattan, kissing my new love goodbye forever. We'd always have Manhattan...
I purchased my zoo ticket with a fever in my eyes, and charged my way straight to the monkey display. An old man wearing assless chaps and sporting a solid gold harmonica started playing the blues.
"Took mah monkey away! Dn dn dn dn dn. I eat fast food all day! Dn dn dn dn dn. I listen to Human Clay. Dn dn dn dn dn. My favorite rock band, Creed. Dn dn dn dn dn." This was a promising lead! I interrupted the southern gentleman to inform him that I worked for Jacksonville man. He asked me which Jacksonville man, and I told him the man in the yellow hat. He told me that children's cartoons aren't real and he punched me in the balls. After purchasing and applying an ice pack, I went back to badgering him, convinced he had the answers. It was the mistake of my life...
The man scowled at me. "Wait here." And I did. Hours. The sky turned light blue to orange to dark blue to black. Everyone had gone home except for me. Eventually, an angry looking security guard approaching me in the dim lighting. "Come with me." He didn't ask: he grabbed me by the collar until I shrugged him off and followed him like I was under arrest for... staying at a zoo for too long, I guessed. We were turning a corner when I felt a blunt object crash the back of my head. I was knocked unconscious.
I was in for the shock of my life. I... I woke up in a cage in what looked like a musty old cellar. Rusted bars, cobwebs, gray slab walls, moss. And even worse than that... I was strapped in some sort of dentist chair style contraption. It was difficult to make much out, but I saw a plaque over a spotted wooden desk that appeared to read: "Dr. Ivan Beavis." My heart skipped erratically, until the security guard approached from beyond an obscured buttress.
"You're awake. You look healthy enough, too.", he said in an eerily detached voice. "Doctor's out, but I'll let you in on what we do." He opened a desk drawer, snatched a needle, and waved it in front of my cage! "This is a serum. We studied the science of Darwin. Apes have much more in common with us than we thought." He cackled. "Through evolutionary science, we now have the knowledge to devolve people into an untraceable product: monkeys. It's a strong business, really."
My eyes enlarged. I gasped. "Georgio...", I whispered. "That's right.", he responded. "Curious George was a human male." What the fuck!!!
Now, I know what you're thinking. The guy got away before, so clearly, he'll get out of this one, too. Nope. Not me. Not this time. Sleeping gas knocked me back out. When I awoke, I was a strapping young chimp. Within weeks, I was adopted.
I know this may seem like a sad ending, but it comes with a caveat. You know that famous proverb about monkeys typing up Shakespeare if you give them typewriters and enough time? ...Well, I wrote this, didn't I?
Oh, come on! Stop feeling sorry for me! I eat all the bananas I want, watch a lot of TV, and my owners think I'm cool. Some animators came over and studied my moves, too. You might even see a Curious George cartoon based off of me, one of these days.
Well, they did it. They finally made monkey out of me. But enough of that! I'm hungry, and my owners just cooked up some hotdogs. I think I'll scarf them all down.
Ooh, ooh!
Eeh, eeh!
They finally made a monkey out of me!
"The Curious George Lost Episode"
YouTube reading
Credited to DaveTheUseless
| Comments • 0 |
Loading comments...
|
