Monkeys Typing Shakespeare

It’s been a while since the SIMI Project lost track of most of our 100 monkeys. As I sit alone in the newly remodeled lunch room and stare at the posters of our monkeys of the week, it hit me: I’m getting pretty lonely in this place. The trips around the country following each lead of a missing monkey are wearing me out. I hearken back to when our typing pen was full. It seems like just yesterday that tails rocked back and forth holding cans of soda while hairy arms furiously pounded at the typewriters. Sometimes those hairy arms were mine but with 100 friends to share the work, I mostly spent my time scooping monkey poo from the walls.

I spent the day with one of our former scientists yesterday. We walked the old streets and talked about the old days. It was nice. A lot had changed in our lives but the lab coats were still the same. White, big buttons and poo stains. Ah, those poo stains. Isn’t it funny the things you miss? I can remember a time when nothing bothered me more than a fresh poo toss. I would jump up and scream, pounding my chest with anger at the audacity of it all. Now, the stain is all that reminds me of winters and summers past.

Back then my youthful idealism was as fresh as the stains. The world held limitless possibilities. You could even say infinite. But slowly that idealism gets stripped back. First when I realized I could never afford an infinite number of monkeys then when I realized I’d need to settle on 100. But we must always dream. I dreamed of monkeys.

The institute is quiet now. A few monkeys show up to type randomly at the new computers we set up. Even the clicking of the keyboards sounds different. Perhaps I shouldn’t have invested in the quiet keyboards. No, it was necessary. After all, our worker’s comp insurance required the new ergonomic workstations.

I don’t know if I will ever recapture all 100 monkeys. I don’t know if the floors will ever have as many banana peels and smeared poo skid marks. I don’t know if my lab coat will ever be white again. Right now I’m just thinking of the slide I went down yesterday and the rip in my lab coat I got from jumping off the swing. I was a little annoyed at myself for ripping a perfectly good coat. However, in 10 years that rip may be all that is left of this time in my life. I will hang my lab coat in the closet and smile at the rip. Yesterday took me back 20 years. Before monkeys, before stains, before gray hairs.