Published: November 19, 2009 09:58 pm      

Our Readers Speak — Nov. 20, 2009

A day in the life of a neanderthal



I want to thank Michael for the laugh I got from his recent letter, “A Day in the Life of a Treehugger.” It has inspired me to write one of my own, “A Day in the Life of a Neanderthal.”

I want to start by saying Neanderthals are smarter than apes and should never be tricked by the apes to risk their lives by climbing banana trees only to be rewarded with the peels. But, having said that, I feel sorry for Neanderthals because of the following story.

After a hard day of dragging his knuckles on the ground, the Neanderthal got home tired and hungry only to find the refrigerator empty. He decided to sloth over to his Neanderthal neighbor’s house to see if maybe there were some good eats to be found there. After clubbing on the door, his neighbor answered with a mouthful of what appeared to be food. Seeing that, the hungry Neanderthal said, “Whatcha eatin’? Whatcha got? I’m hungry, can I have sum?”

The neighbor replied, “These are banana peels. It’s all I have. They make you sick, but they satisfy your hunger. I been feedin’ em to my kids.”

“Where’d gee get ’em, can I get some too?” asked the hungry one.

“Yep, you can get sum too,” said the neighbor, “just go down there to the ape hangout. They own the mountain where the banana trees are. They’ll let you go up there, climb the trees and get all the bananas you can get. But you got to bring them back down to the ape hangout where some other Neanderthals take off the peels to get the cob out. They give the cob to the apes and then the apes give you some of the banana peels from the banana peel pile.” “What’s a cob?” asked the inquisitive Neanderthal.

“Well, I’m not sure, but it has something to do with their religion,” said the neighbor.

“Why’s that?” pressed the curious Neanderthal.

“Well,” said the thoughtful Neanderthal, “They seem to idolize the cob. They call themselves a whole bunch of things related to the cob. Friends of Cob, Faces of Cob, things like that. I figure they mean to use the word God, but you know those apes, they have a hard time gettin’ their words straight and that’s OK, because we’re gettin’ the peels!”



Bo Webb

Naoma