When I was first with the old folks, they sent me to school so that I could become socialized as well as develop the skills that might one day lead me to be self-sufficient. One of the classes I took, at their insistence, was called "Home Economics." The course focused on the domestic skills required to live outside the parental home. Cooking. Sewing. Dressing ourselves. In the unit devoted to dressing ourselves, the instructor tried to help us discover the colors that would illuminate our faces so that we might look nice as adults. (apparently, with humans, different colors bring out good or bad skin tones and features. It's fascinating, really.) Anyway, we were given stacks of cloth in various colors and told to hold them up to our faces and allow our classmates to decide if they "washed us out" or "illuminated" us. As we were passing class time this way, the instructor wandered over to my table. She stood over me and observed our progress. Then suddenly, she shouted out -- and pointed at me. She turned to the class and announced that I had a grey (silver) hair. She was shocked that one of her students could have grey (silver) hair at such a tender age.
I was so humiliated that I didn't even try to explain that for monkeys, this is good, this is a rite of passage, this is how we know the adults from the children.
Today, I received a frantic email from an old friend who is actually very nearly half way through her life and JUST DISCOVERED HER FIRST GREY HAIR. Poor thing. She doesn't even know that it will be years before she has enough to be considered full grown in the monkey world.
No comments:
Post a Comment