Monday, May 29, 2006

Glass of Milk

TOWWAS and I took the Monkey downtown yesterday to the museums. The premise was to see the Jim Henson exhibit at the American History museum...but "exhibit" turned out to be a bit strong of a word. We made it through the four cases (?!) of muppet-lore in record time and had the better part of the day ahead to do with as we pleased so we went over to Natural History.

The detour through the prehistoric mammal exhibit sparked copious amounts of singing of They Might Be Giants' "Mammal" (the Monkey is a big fan). But after the singing...things got serious...


TOWWAS: It's hard to believe we're from the same family as all these animals, huh, Monkey?

Monkey: (incredulous you-can't-fool-me voice) We're not from the same family...!

TOWWAS: Sure we are...well, I mean, since we're all mammals.

Monkey: I'm not a mammal!

TOWWAS: Um...yeah you are! You have hair...and you, er...drink(?!)...milk...and you have special earbones. You're a mammal...we all are!

Monkey: We're not mammals! We don't have tails...

TOWWAS: Well, actually, we do sort of have a tail...but it's really little and on the inside. But that's not the point...

Monkey: I don't have a tail!!! ...or fur...

TOWWAS: Your fur's just on your head...and I'm telling you, you have a little tail on the inside. But that doesn't matter because people are mammals!

Monkey: We're not mammals!! You guys are grown-ups and I'm a kid!!

Me (to TOWWAS): Um...I don't think you're going to win this one.

TOWWAS: *mutter*

4 comments:

grrrbear said...

[sudden realization]

Hey...*I* don't have a tail either! Moreover, I don't have any fur, either!

Ooo! Does this mean I'm a dinosaur!? Kewl!!!!

GRRRRRR!!!!!

Cheryl said...

Little Miss swears she has a tail, (we all do) and we keep telling her it's a bottom. Apparently she is smarter than we are. There's a big shock.

towwas said...

I also said, "We're just like gorillas, only with less hair." He didn't believe me.

MonkeyMom said...

I shared this story with my mom last night and she tried the gorilla approach too (only she stopped short of saying we were "like" gorillas...only that gorillas were mammals with no tails...Mom's definitely creationist and wouldn't ever imply that we evolved from them).

Anyway, if it's any comfort, he didn't buy the gorilla thing from her either.