Welcome to our first stop! The Queen's Pearls: Not a Girl Monkey's Best Friend is a great story about one of my great-great-great-aunts! I came across this story in an old diary she kept when she was younger. I found it in the family tree's attic covered in dust. Of course, I was so little I could not yet read so I had Grandpa Edward read it to me. I hope you enjoy the story as much as I did. I'm going to swing along to get the next story ready for you. See you at the next stop!
xx Flexy
The Queen's Pearls: Not a Girl Monkey's Best Friend.
Dear Diary,
I'm sorry I haven't written in so long. My life has been up in shambles lately! I've finally returned to your comfort; writing to you keeps me happy! Right now, you may be the only friend I have.
It all started just a couple of weeks back when I was minding my own business one day having a banana up in the tree tops - I was thinking about what I would write about to you, Diary! At that time my life was going great. I was to be married off to the best-looking chimpanzee in the forest the next weekend! I was making great grades in all my classes at the MA (MA = Monkey Academy) including Human Nature: Why Humans Act the Way They Do. I even received the Most Supportive Monkey award from my classmates because I was always such a good helper to anyone who was struggling in their classes or at home. Then Tuesday happened. Wretched, wretched Tuesday.
I had a dentist appointment that morning and decided to take the rest of the day off from school. I was just swinging along, practicing my double back flip tail catch when I decided to take a rest and have a banana. Then the excitement happened. The King and Queen of the Humans and all their family came into the woods to do funny human things. They all charged the lake to go swimming except they ran right into the water; they didn't do any tricks or flips or anything. And some of them even STILL had their clothes on. Bizarre, I know. The Queen, who had been getting all the picnic things ready for lunch, was the last to enter the freezing cold water. That's another weird thing humans do: they always yelp and scream at how cold the water is. Why do they get in then?!
As she was getting ready to get in the water the Queen removed a beautiful string of pearls from her neck. Looking back, I'm not exactly sure what came over me; it's uncharacteristic of me to steal other people's belongings and it was definitely an impulse decision. "How beautiful it would look draped around my neck for my wedding day," I heard myself say softly. Before I could even talk myself out of it, I was quietly rustling through the trees, one by one, as I came closer to the beautiful piece of jewelry. Hanging upside down by my tail I reached as far as I could and easily grabbed the necklace and a banana nut muffin to-go, of course. Back in the trees with the shiny strand of pearls, I could not believe my eyes.
Later on that day my mother found me admiring the pearls in the mirror and asked me where I had received such a fabulous gift. I lied to her and said that a friend of my fiancé had given the pearls to me as a gift. I LIED to my MOTHER! I tried to make myself feel better for a couple of days, setting my guilt aside that was slowly sinking in.
I was gliding through the trees about a week later when I came acrross the King and Queen back in the forest. They were searching for the lost pearls. I realized, as I listened to the Queen talk, that they were extremely upset at the thought of someone maybe betraying them in their village. This began to make me feel even more guilty for what I had done, so I decided I would hide the pearls until my wedding day, wear them, and then return them immediately - my conscience was definitely kicking back in.
In the meantime, one of the King's Jesters became convinced that a monkey had taken the strand while the royal family was swimming - clever little guy. Of course, I had no idea he suspected a monkey. He knew about the obsessions monkeys have with small, shiny objects. So he, little to my own knowledge, set out to find the monkey and the precious pearls. The day of my wedding I took the pearls out of their hiding spot and, as much as I hate to say it, I was flaunting them to all the monkeys around me. "Look at my beautiful pearls that I get to wear on my wedding day," I said to a group of my friends. Their ooh's and ah's made me extremely happy and excited. Unfortunately, the Joker had been wandering the forest that day looking for the pearls. He glanced my direction, saw that I was flaunting them to every monkey around and snatched me up just like that.
He turned me into the King where I sat for a whole day in their dungeon, sobing about my ruined wedding day. When the King and Queen decided to release me, I returned back to the forest to find that my family was humiliated, my fiancé had decided he could not marry a thief, and my friends were all making fun of me. I haven't even been home in two weeks. I am so ashamed of my arrogance that I do not think I'll ever feel comfortable going home again.
Until next time, Diary. Hopefully I'll come with better news!
Author's Note: I really loved the original version of the story and felt sorry for the way the girl monkey was portrayed, even though she did choose to do the wrong thing. I wanted to tell my story from the perspective of the monkey in order to provoke sympathetic feelings towards the girl monkey. It is interesting to me how easily the attitudes of readers can change based on whose perspective the story is told from. The original story was not told from any specific character's perspective, which allowed for the reader to feel completely removed for their own judgment or criticism. In the original story, it was the King's head guard who trapped the girl monkey and he had actually tricked her instead of just finding her flaunting her pearls in the forest. You do not, however, get any insight into what happened to the girl monkey after the King gets the pearls back in the original text. I wanted to include a little bit of detail after the girl monkey had been caught to show how arrogance can result in unfortunate endings. The moral to the story I wrote is not to flaunt materialistic things and to be humble. The original story, The Girl Monkey and the String of Pearls from Jataka Tales by Ellen C. Babbitt (1912), can be found at this link. I hope you enjoyed the first story. I also hope you enjoyed Flexy... He is really excited he's a part of this project ;-)
Bibliography Information: More Jataka Tales by Ellen C. Babbitt. New York: D. Appleton-Century Company. 1922. Link.
Image Information: "Monkey In Pearls" Mark DeMuro 2003 Mark Fine Art
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