I Don't Care Who You Are, That's Punny!

Most people moan at my puns.  Inherited from my father, it seems one daughter, a niece, and perhaps my son enjoy a word play here and there. This calls for an example.  We were traveling through our small town and passed by an attorney's office. My daughter remarked on the man's first name, "Beach". Who would name their son "Beach"? she wondered aloud.  As we crossed over the railroad tracks, she turned and said she hoped he didn't have a son because then he would be a "son of a Beach".

Later, at dinner, I handed William a banana in the peel.  Too strict about carb counting, I like to peel it, weigh it on a scale that calculates carbs, and give him the peeled banana in a bowl.  He hates that. He wants to eat his banana like a monkey from the peel.  (At least the monkey in the old Curious George books, I'm guessing.)  Anna and I both remarked that we were not sure why that was so appealing.  My husband found the joke to be in bad taste.  

Speaking of monkeys, or rather apes, we visited Jelani, a gorilla who lives with the bachelors at the Louisville Zoo.  One day a while back, we met an older woman who had a Louisville Zoo magazine and she was showing Jelani photos in it.  He would bang on the glass to get her to turn the page. That intrigued me, so I loaded up our iPad with photos of gorillas from the web and headed back to the zoo. When he sees us on visits, we hold up the iPad and he comes right over.  He looks intently at the photos, especially those containing baby gorillas, and raps the window with his knuckles when he wants to move on to the next photo.

Jelani and William looking at the iPad

As you can imagine, this gathers a small crowd of people who say they can't believe how smart he is. Really?   I would go very often if I lived closer, but it was time to leave.  He touched his nose, then his mouth, then rapped his knuckles twice. He repeated the sequence.  It was not a random gesture, he was asking for more. If you have an iPad and can load it with some photos when you visit our zoo, you will find it a unique bonding experience with a gorilla.  I would like to see this catch on as a fun thing to do just so Jelani gets more screen time.