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June 7, 2024 · 2:58 am

Why Did I Create All of This?

Kitty in a black bunny suit with white bunny head phones on for overkill.

There is probably no mystery in Paffooney #1. Kitty sends me provocative pictures via Instagram. She’s actually twenty-two years old, but she looks twelve. I believe other lustful old coots send her money and gifts for providing the bunny pictures like the one that inspired this goofy Paffooney. I am not a creepy old man… most of the time. But though my sex life is pretty much over, I still remember it and still have a few hormones left in my libido-fueled, impotent memory. I can send her digital copies of the drawings I make of her. But I have no other money or gifts to give her for the stream of rabbit pictures she produces at the rate of real breeding rabbits. She’s a cute girl the age of my daughter, so I follow her. But I do not do what other old lust-filled coots do. At least I think I don’t. I prefer to make Paffooneys.

These are a few of my Instagram pictures that I have put out there instead of selfies in bunny costumes like Kitty makes. I don’t look as good in a bunny suit as Kitty does. I have also published twenty-four novels and books full of my fiction, essays, and poetry. I am a real artist and author even though I don’t make more than pocket change for any of it. So, why do I do it?

Me pretending to be a mountain nudist because I wrote a story in the collection of shorts called ***Adventures Without Clothes.***

Well, for one thing, I am retired. I need to do something to replace my career as the monkey instructor in the monkeyhouse (translation; a middle school teacher.) You get addicted to giving heartfelt advice to monkeys ages twelve to fifteen in a very loud and forceful voice without using any too-colorful metaphors or hitting anybody with sticks (translation; teaching English.) I miss talking to monkeys. So, I make up monkeys based on remembered monkeys and put them into interesting plots to fill up the time before I finally die. (Of course, old English teachers never die. They simply stop being heard and lose all their class.) And now that digital tools and AI apps help me draw as much as I used to before the arthritis in my hands got bad, I also draw lots of monkey pictures, mostly depicting monkeys.

I can draw pictures of evil vice principals now too. You know, the security beasts in the monkey house who discipline the monkeys by roasting teachers over fire pits until they are finally willing to hit monkeys with sticks. Of course, you can’t teach monkeys monkey tricks if you hit them with sticks. That’s why I got roasted a lot by beasts like Billy Bob Smashdareburger pictured above.

It’s like I can’t help myself anymore. I have to write and draw goofy stuff and try to get people to read it like I used to entice monkeys to take books like The Giver and The Hobbit home with them to open in front of parents and pretend to read so they could come in the next day at the monkey house to get talked to in a loud voice without overly-colorful metaphors or hitting sticks being used.

It is much more difficult to let go of teaching things to monkeys and gradually stop doing all those habitual rituals a teacher in the monkey house has to do. So I fill the time with drawing Paffooneys and telling lies about monkeys (translation; being an author and artist.)

Welcome to the Monkey House (Unfortunately, not by Kurt Vonnegut)

In my effort to create a proper field guide to all the critters and flitters and animals you find in the modern schoolroom, I can’t neglect to talk about the Monkey House. I was, after all, a middle school teacher for 24 of my 30 years in teaching. One simply cannot take that many blows to the back of the head from spit-wads and other assorted classroom projectiles without going a little bit ape-happy. (I once knew an eighth grade science teacher who liked to use the ape-happy expression to describe student behavior. But he didn’t actually say “happy”. He substituted the magic s-word. It is magic because no matter how many times the teacher hears, or over-hears, or gets assaulted by that word in the classroom, the teacher can never say it himself… It will make him disappear… permanently. I know it’s true. It happened to my friend the science teacher.) Sorry, I digress sometimes. Too many spit-wads to the back of the head.

In the Monkey House, especially the seventh grade version of it, there are certain essential behavioral characteristics that you have to be aware of. First of all, and with malice aforethought, the monkeys like to throw poop. Now, I don’t mean that literally… (Although in one case I remember about fourteen years ago… No, wait, I don’t really want to go back there again.) It is only in the figurative sense. The monkeys have big monkey eyes. They see everything. And what they see, they will TELL you about… in all capital letters. If your fly is open, especially if you’re the teacher, they will tell you about it, loudly, “YOUR FLY IS OPEN!” at precisely the same moment that the gung-ho lady principal and the curriculum director with the scary glare walk in together to view this innovative teaching style they’ve heard so much about in faculty lounge. In a Texas Monkey House like the ones I’ve taught in, kids will tell each other to be quiet in the rudest possible way in the loudest possible voice. They say it Spanish, which of course, both the principal and the curriculum director spoke as their first language. They say it in words that literally mean “shut your dog-mouth”. And they add the magic p-word in Spanish for good measure. (The students will all tell you that the magic p-word really just means “stupid person”, but to translate it more accurately, it means “one who routinely thinks only with that body part that only boys have access to”, or possibly, “your brains are full of poop!”) And they don’t only throw their poop out of their mouths. They can also fling it with fingers, especially that one magic finger, but also in rude gestures, using both hands, the elbow, and even throwing around gang signs that can get you killed in the wrong parts of San Antonio or Dallas.

The second behavioral characteristic in the Monkey House is the ability to be the dumbest dumb monkey in the classroom. Nobody wants to be smart. That is the kiss of death. Bullies beat you relentlessly throughout the school day and for the rest of your natural life (as short as that will probably be) if they learn that you are a smart monkey. Even the girl monkeys adhere to this rule. To be smart makes you a “teacher’s pet” and a potential stool pigeon. To be smart makes you radioactive, and likely to get anyone around you killed as well. A smart girl will never have the necessary boy friend because what boy wants to hang around with a girl that knows too much and can probably out-think him? A smart boy had better keep his head down, and in the classroom, his hand down. The universal truth is this… the big monkeys EAT the smart monkeys.

The third, but most important characteristic in the Monkey House is that somebody has to love the monkeys. Monkeys don’t thrive in a pack, or left to their own devices. They don’t just live in the Monkey House at school. Their home life is just as crazy. The monkeys at home throw just as much poop, and they also EAT the smart monkeys (all in capital letters… truly). Somebody has to be willing to talk to the monkeys, to learn their language… to deal with them one on one. They need somebody to understand them and sympathize with their horrible monkey lives. Somebody has to show them how not to be a monkey… even if they’re one of the big ones who eat other monkeys. Monkeys have value. They make you laugh and they make you cry. (Sorry. I didn’t mean to make you cry too. You weren’t ever a monkey, were you?) So you teach in the Monkey House and the principal doesn’t fire you for having no proper classroom discipline and for having monkeys who misbehave, because if the principal is any good at her job, she realizes that you are the kind of teacher who loves the monkeys and the monkeys need you.