It lay in the road, abandoned.
Normally, by now someone would have picked it up, put it on
a wall, or taken it to the nearest place with a window, to be reclaimed.
Normally, the child who had lost the toy monkey would have
cried, screamed, thrown themselves down on the ground, done whatever it took
for Mum to retrace her steps to look for Monkey.
But these were strange times, nobody out in the streets,
everyone at home, safe, hiding from the Virus.
I was out and about, posting a letter to my grandson with
yet another poem to boost his ego till the schools reopened. As I turned from
the post box, I saw the monkey and headed towards it, hoping that there might
be a clue as to where it had come from, or to whom it belonged. I picked it up,
turned it round and round and spotted the key around its neck. It was a car
key, so I guessed it must have been missed unless it was a duplicate.
There was a car park nearby, with around a dozen cars
parked, so I strolled over until alarm bells stopped me in my tracks. Mums and
Dads don’t usually attach car keys to toys, and children’s toys don’t usually
have adult car keys attached to them.
While I was thinking maybe I should go back and leave both
monkey and key exactly where I found them, I heard a rumbling behind me and a
small voice said “please can you give me back my motorbike key?” When I turned
around, a toddler was looking up at me, sat astride a duck on wheels, with a
hole in its neck, and a breathless Mum was running towards us. “Sorry,” she gasped,
“George said the monkey had run off with his key.”
Speechless, I handed back Monkey, and stood long after they had all gone, wondering if the Virus had turned us all into weirdos.
Jean Taylor
18.3.21
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