Previous Challenge Entry
Topic: Insulted (11/01/04)
TITLE: Any Circumstantial Evidence to the Contrary, My Ancestors Didn't Swing from Trees. By Glenda Lagerstedt 11/06/04 |
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No amount of stretching brings me back up to the nearly five foot three inches of height I’d managed to gain by the end of my growing years; in fact, somewhere along the line I have actually shrunk a half-inch! Statistics on aging, and family history, warned me of this pending threat to my status in the world.
I wonder now if it is possible that my dream job (carrying around adorable chunky cherubs, sometimes one on each hip) could be working against me. Could their weight, borne many times throughout any given weekday, compress my shrinking body further? Could it possibly stretch my arms even as it shrinks my body? If I get shorter and my arms get longer, I could end up resembling a primate. They did tell us in school that we are descended from monkeys….
But if it’s true that my ancestors were monkeys, I am sure I would have inherited a love of swinging high in the forest. The fact is, though, that my idea of terrifying height is anything more than twelve inches off the ground without a good strong fence around it.
I once tried to transfer my fear of heights to my five-year-old son. (No self respecting monkey mother would ever do that.) One long ago day, friends and I walked along a country road with our children. Dan’s pal climbed a tree, and of course Dan followed. The friend came down as nimbly as he went up, but Dan was stuck. All efforts to talk him down failed. And since the road crews had recently gone through, cutting bushes along the roadside, there were some very sharp sticks protruding from the ground just waiting to impale my beloved child if he fell.
Finally we resorted to fetching a ladder and taking turns climbing up and attempting to encourage the lad to get his feet onto the rungs. Nothing doing. As the sharp sticks awaiting my son’s body grew sharper before my eyes (honest!) I headed to the nearest telephone to tearfully call my husband’s dad to come and help.
A few minutes later, the ever careful, safely-under-the-speed-limit Grandpa tore down the lane in a cloud of dust like the Lone Ranger to the rescue. Seems he got the impression that Dan was hanging precariously by one arm ready to plunge from a tremendous height onto sharpened sticks on the ground below. Instead he found a small boy sitting calmly and securely on a relatively low limb, thoroughly enjoying the unfolding of events.
It is sufficient for the reader to know that it took time for me to live that one down and that my efforts to make sure he never climbed another tree were thwarted.
I can confidently say that there is no monkey blood in me. As a rebellious ten-year-old, I thought the theory of evolution was a little off because I simply couldn’t understand where the creatures that were still in this mutating process from monkey to people were hidden. Still can’t.
The first chapter of the Bible clearly states that God created the earth and the animals and then He created mankind in His own image. That settles it for me. Frankly, any suggestion that this human race created in His image is simply a new and improved line of monkeys is hogwash. I wonder that people can embrace such an unlikely theory instead of being deeply insulted by the very suggestion.
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