When I was about five years old, I learned the truth of my
birth. My older sister and I were looking at a family photo album when I
noticed that, though there were plenty of pictures of her in the hospital from
the day she was born, there were no such pictures of me. In fact, I was over a
month old before I started showing up on film. My parents told me that there
were no hospital pictures because the ones they had taken had accidently gotten
exposed and ruined (this was well before digital photos, mind you, so theoretically this could have happened.)
My sister, however, told me the real story:
“One day, Mommy and Daddy went to
the monkey cage at the zoo. They picked out the cutest monkey, cut off its
tail, shaved it, and brought it home. And that’s you!”
Now of course my parents vehemently denied it, but why would
me sister lie to me? She was always
looking out for me, right? So I stopped asking questions, but for years I
believed I was a monkey from the zoo. When I got a bit older, I realized that
there is no way I could be a monkey. I mean, why didn’t my fur grow back after
they shaved it? It just didn’t make sense. That’s when I realized that I must
not have literally been a monkey, but clearly I had been born with a tail. That
would explain everything! My parents wanted to keep it a secret to save me from
embarrassment, which is why they took no pre monkey-tail-removal-surgery photos.
My parents once again denied it when I questioned them, but
wouldn’t they deny it especially if I
was born with a tail? No matter what they claim, there is something that looks suspiciously like scar tissue on my
tailbone...
