Today the monkey and I went to the farm for our biweekly Sunday adventure, and to pick up our produce. There is a small play area equipped with a swingset/slide/monkey bar combo, a couple of bigwheels, and assorted other toys for the kids to play with. Usually we visit the chickens and pig, then we head to the play area for a while before we pick up the produce and listen to the live music. Today as we were admiring the chickens, monkey was particularly concerned with the one that had escaped the chicken area, a little boy we’d met before came up to us.

The last time we’d met the little boy we discovered that he was a boy and not a girl by listening carefully to his mother talk to him. Eventually she called him by his name, Michael, and we (or more-so I) realized that he was a boy. Michael is about 2 months older than the monkey, has very long hair, and is not quite as adventurous (by this I mean wildly crazy) as the monkey.

So Michael and the monkey start looking at the escaped chicken. Michael seems to want to catch the chicken, but monkey calmly and authoritatively tells Michael that they are only allowed to look at it – “We need to leave it alone to do its thing,” monkey says to Michael. Michael seems easily convinced by monkey, and begins to check out the pig. At this point, monkey is tired of the animals and is ready for some play area fun. So we start to walk off. Michael assumes that his is coming with us and starts to lead the way. I find his mother and tell her that he seems to be heading to the play area too. She’s obviously a much more relaxed parent than I am – she says “Oh, okay. That’s fine, I can see him from here.” (The playground is on the other side of one of the growing fields, so maybe she could kind of see him – if she had a set of binoculars…

So the boys and I head to the play area. At this time, I still can’t remember the little boy’s name – so I just keep referring to him as “our new friend.” Monkey doesn’t seem to think the same as me – he calls the little boy “Judy” or “Julie” I couldn’t really tell which. Eventually, like 10-15 minutes later, our friend’s mom saunters over. She starts calling the child by name, thus we now know the real name. Monkey still prefers to call him Judy.

Monkey and Judy get along so well that Judy’s mom heads off to other areas of the farm to stuff. We all play for quite a while and while sitting there I think of five things about the experience: