cousins

MFFFC — A Monkey’s Uncle

Fandango15 Comments

“Look at that monkey sitting on that rock eating an ear of corn. Doesn’t he look like he could almost be human?” James said to his son, Kyle.

“Hey Dad, I have a question for you,” Kyle said. “When I was in Sunday school last weekend, the teacher was talking about how God created everything, including humans. But then she said some people don’t believe that. She said they believe that humans evolved from monkeys. But she said that if humans evolved from monkeys, how can monkeys and humans be alive at the same time? So there is a monkey,” Kyle said, pointing to the corn on the cob-eating monkey, “and I’m a human, and we are both alive now. So humans can’t have evolved from monkeys, right?”

“That’s a great question, Kyle,” James said. “Let me explain. Humans did not directly evolve from modern-day monkeys. Instead, both humans and modern-day monkeys share a common ancestor from which they evolved around 25 million years ago. So, in the vast evolutionary family tree, humans and monkeys are cousins. It’s like you and your cousin Mike. You and Mike both have the same grandparents but different parents. You and Mike are related, but you’re in different branches of the same family tree!”

“I’m going to tell my Sunday school teacher that she is wrong and that monkeys and humans can be alive at the same time because we have the same grandparents,” Kyle said.

“I’ll tell you what, Kyle,” James said. “You don’t need to correct your Sunday school teacher. I’ll talk to her and make sure she understands how evolution works, okay?”

Kyle thought for a moments and finally said okay. “But I have another question for you. If that monkey and I are cousins because we share the same grandparents, does that make you that monkey’s uncle?”

Written for Melissa’s Fandango Flash Fiction Challenge. Photo credit: Bao Menglong on Unsplash.

#WDYS — Cousins

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They were cousins, born just four months apart. They were closer than any two sisters you could imagine, but yet they were about as different as two little girls could possibly be. Maybe that was why they were close to inseparable and played so well together.

Their mothers were sisters and didn’t get along as well as their two daughters did. But the sisters had agreed to an arrangement where one of the sisters would watch the two little cousins on alternating weekends. That way, each of the sisters would get alone time with her respective spouse for an entire weekend every other weekend. This arrangement worked well for everyone — the mothers, the fathers, and the two little cousins.

Until that one weekend when the two little cousins, hand-in-hand, wandered off. The sister who had them for the weekend realized that she hadn’t seen or heard the girls for more than an hour. She called out their names, but there was no response. She went through every room in her house hoping to find them. But they were nowhere to be found.

She ran outside to the front yard to see if they were outside playing there. They weren’t. Then she ran to the back of the house. They were not there, either. She began screaming their names at the top of her lungs, but heard only silence in return.

She called her husband, who had gone to the hardware store, and told him the cousins were missing. He quickly drove home and joined his wife as they fanned out into the neighborhood to see if they could find the little girls. But they didn’t find them. Anywhere.

The mother of one of the little cousins reluctantly picked up the phone and called the mother of the other little cousin. “They’re missing,” she said, crying almost hysterically.

Written for the What Do You See? prompt from Sadje at Keep it Alive. Photo credit: Cheryl Holt at Pixabay.