Bernie The Monkey Helps His Creator Cope With Loss

Once upon a time, a long, long time ago in a land far, far, far away... there lived a little monkey named Bernie the Monkey. One morning, Bernie the Monkey awoke suddenly in his little bed in his little room in his little house in the little Bosquet Magico (Magic Forest). Someone was weeping softly outside his bedroom window. "Is that you, King Aaron," Bernie the Monkey called out from under his warm blankets. "Has the Giant stolen the "Goose that Lays the Golden Eggs" yet again. Do you want me to sit atop the butterfly that is as big as an airplane, engage in mortal combat with the flying vulture who keeps insisting that he will only "be glad when I am dead", and rescue the goose only after an exhausted giant falls asleep with a sore nose and eye (from when I poke him with the spoon in the coffee cup) and then tie gunpowder to his big toe and make him go "kaboom"... Is that what you require of me, my old friend King Aaron? If so, just let me know," Bernie the Monkey called out to his old friend as he rummaged around for his "Round the Bush... Round the Bush big black bearskin housecoat. To his great surprise, however, when he finally looked out the window he did not see his good ol' friend King Aaron sitting on a toadstool outside his bedroom window. Instead it was someone Bernie the Monkey had never, ever seen before. Someone he was never meant to even glimpse at for fear of upsetting "spacetime". As all educated monkeys know the space–time continuum is a mathematical model that combines space and time into a single interwoven continuum. The spacetime of Bernie the Monkey's universe is usually interpreted from a Euclidean space perspective, with space consisting of three dimensions, and time as consisting of one dimension, the "fourth dimension". On this bright, crisp September 9, 2015, morning however Bernie the Monkey was thrust suddenly into a FIFTH DIMENSION as he looked into the face of the man behind the invention of the hairy little ape-like Bernie. "Are you the Wizard of Oz," Bernie the Monkey asked hesitantly. No, the man replied, I am Laura and Elizabeth's father. I lost my two daughters just over three years ago and don't know how to find them. I left a trail of breadcrumbs but the crows devoured them all years ago. I left a trail of white quartz pebbles but the stonemason collected them all, unfortunately, to decorate his new cement fireplace mantlepiece. I left a trail of broken hearts but the winds of time have carried them all away. I left a trailing tale of woe in the form of tears but the flowers soaked them all up on the morn' when the dew forgot to appear. I left a pathway of children's picture books from the Alta Vista library and covered them all with honey (for honey is sweet and so is reading) but the animals of the forest collected them all and returned them to the library after three years and $3,000 pesos in late fees. I left a host of faded Kodak photos from the childhood years only to have the winds of time sweep up every last remnant of photographic evidence that I ever existed and throw it into the dustbin of forgotten history. I left a maze of intricate memories (such as playing ping pong on the kitchen table; dancing to the musical theme of "Un homme et son péché" des Belles Histoires des Pays-d'en-Haut de Claude-Henri Grignon" on the old parlour radio in the Museum of Science and Technology, awaiting the tickles that invariably followed the tr_sty, r_sty, p_ck_t knif_, dancing in the kitchen with each of my daughters when they were infants to the sound of Debussy' Clair de Lune for 21 minutes (it was absolute heaven and the girls could fit in my hand when I first began that custom which continued until they got older), playing in the bathtub with the two of them splashing water everywhere and having a grand old time...