Every morning at 7:00, Curious George, comes on PBS right was Rakicy and I are rushing around trying to get ready, so it has become the 1 television show that Capone gets to watch regularly. And while he rarely sits and actually watches, this morning he did not want to get up and Rakicy had to leave for work early, and Capone was not in the best mood. So while I packed his daycare bag, he sat on the couch and watched.
As I’m stuffing cloth diapers, I hear him start yelling and beating on the entertainment center and I rush to see what happened. PBS intersperses Curious George with clips of real children talking about the character and drawing pictures and this morning there was a little girl on the show talking about “George the Monkey” and everything monkeys could do that humans couldn’t. Capone was mad. He was furious. And while he kept yelling at the little girl on the tv every time she said the word monkey, he was signing “dog” over and over again becoming slightly more animated each time. When he saw me he babbled some string of what I can only assume was an angry rant at the little girl’s mistake and as the cartoon came back on he kept pointing at Curious George and then looking at me and telling me “dog” even adding “please” occasionally.
So why would Capone insist that Curious George is a dog? Because he’s missing a monkey tail. This morning’s argument with PBS was more animated than I had ever seen, but it was not the first time we have had the monkey v. dog conversation at our house. Several weeks ago, he started telling me that Curious George was a dog and while I thought he was just using dog because he didn’t know what a monkey was, it became clear when he would take my arms and push them down every time I signed monkey that he was fairly certain that the cartoon character in question was anything but a monkey. In the last several weeks he has developed quite the animals signs and sounds vocabulary (dog, mouse, cow, goat, monkey, chicken, turtle, snail, cat, horse, bird, etc). And between Signing Time and numerous animal books, he can identify if not sign numerous animals.
So while George is called a monkey repeatedly on the show, Capone has discovered a error. Curious George cannot be a monkey because he doesn’t have a tail. He is, therefore, by default he is most likely a chimpanzee which is classified as an ape. (For more differences between monkeys and apes click here). And Capone seems to be a fan of the tail rule, which I will admit I was not even aware of until several weeks ago when this all started.
In the mean time, however, I think we may refrain from using the word monkey in our house.
