Mister Boyfriend and I got to talking about cymbal monkeys last night. I‛ve always thought them quite horrifying and nightmarish. Until this morning, I had forgotten the reason why.

Between the ages of three and five, I went to near-daily speech therapy sessions to relearn to talk after my episode of spinal meningitis. My audiologist, Fred, tested my hearing quite regularly. This meant that I sat in one soundproof room while he sat in the adjoining one. There was a window between us, and microphones to talk with. The room was quite dark, and very large to my small self. Once the heavy door swung shut, it wasn‛t unlike a prison cell. I would sit in my small chair while Fred played the recorded test and I answered.

Say the word ... ice cream.
"Eye cream."
Say the word ... baseball.
"Bayball."
Say the word ... stop light.
"Top light."

And we would determine that I still had problems making the ‚s‛ sound. Esss. Essssss. At least I was no longer getting y‛s and l‛s confused. Yight. No, light.

Say the word ... supercalifragilisticespialidocious.

Up high on the wall, in a corner, was a cymbal monkey. Its bloodshot, beady eyes peered into the dim room as it perched there in great anticipation. When I did something right, Fred would hit the switch and the monkey would bounce up and down and bang its cymbals. It was a truly horrifying experience for a small child in the midst of being judged. Being Southern and thus already subject to intense politeness training, I didn‛t want to be rude about something that was obviously supposed to make me happy. So for God knows how long, I went into the little dark room and got monkey-cymballed as a reward. Finally, I did tell Fred that the monkey scared me � probably in one of my infamous and very impolite speech therapy temper tantrums. He never played it again during our sessions, but it always lurked up there in the corner, awaiting reanimation like a squat, fake-furred Golem.

And that is why there will be no cymbal monkeys in my house today.