The Pet I Always Wanted

For my tenth birthday I got a copy of the Guiness Book of World Records which I read from cover to cover at least twenty times. It was the 1982 Special Edition and within it's pages were listed some fun facts that I use to this day. For instance, I discovered the world's hardest tongue twister which took me a full week to master: The sixth sick shiek's sixth sheep's sick. Or the world's most alcoholic city: I remember it was some place in Siberia where each person consumed three gallons of vodka a day and that was counting every man, woman, and child. The 1982 Special Edition even had the fat twins on the minibikes and those African ladies with all those brass rings around their necks. However, my single favorite thing above all other things and the page I looked at the most was the one about the world's smallest monkey. I remember it as the "thumb monkey" but it is actually a pygmy marmoset. I wanted one of those monkeys so bad I used to dream about having one all the way into my teen years (which was around the time my brother traded my 1982 Special Edition copy of the Guiness Book of World Records for a pack of Levi Garrett chewing tobacco). That was nearly twenty years ago so it came as a bit of a surprise to me to see the pygmy marmoset once again on the front page of the Herald Sun. Now I want one all over again.


Just look at the little buggers. Sure kitties and puppies are cute but they don't have little hands and little people-like faces. It's a fact that the people of Lilliput were direct descendents of the pygmy marmoset. Alright I made that up.

Maybe I'm still scarred by the whole Sea Monkey fiasco which was a pretty bad event in my childhood. I know your thinking, "Hey, who didn't get disappointed by Sea Monkeys? Get over it." But you didn't have my brother. I spent twelve bucks of my own money on the bowl, the castle, and other various kingdom related items and just before my Sea Monkeys voted on their first form of Parliamentary government, my brother dumped a cup of bleach into the bowl. No Sea Monkey survived, not one.

That left a hole in my heart and I think I need a wee monkey to plug that hole. Either that, or I need to read Catcher in the Rye again. Either way, it means I've gotta go shopping on Ebay.