Richard Erickson / CC BY-SAThe prompt a day fiction prompt from 
I had just finished reading the child’s story, “A New Teddy,” that ended with the sentence, “This time daddy brought a strange teddy bear home.” I sat there wondering how happy I would have been if I’d been given a teddy bear, strange or not, by my daddy; I tried to feel something; but I don’t remember ever meeting my daddy.
No one ever gave me a teddy bear.
Sometimes I wonder if my daddy is still alive, possibly in some rest home for aging apes. He would have known about me, and maybe, just for a very short time, he actually played with me before I was taken away and sent across the country.
I don’t remember when I arrived at the zoo in Denver, I was still so young, but an ape I consider to be my mom, Sawini, decided that she would care for me. There were two silverbacks from that time, Jojo and Jock, and both offered me their advice, although some of that advice was not good advice.
I was closer to Jojo than I was with Jock, and Jojo didn’t really care much for Jock. Even though they’d get in some horrific arguments, it never escalated to a knock-down, drag-out fight between the two. A lot of chest beating was the most serious threat of violence and it never went further.
I always had fun with Jock though. He was a very funny guy, but he taught me one of the greatest truths that I will always remember and live by - that “no one is more important than me.” It was Jock who convinced me I was exceptionally handsome, and he even predicted that I’d be sent somewhere else, (L.A.), because of it, and I would become famous.
Jojo was more of a goody two-shoes kind of guy. He tried to instill in me, positive values, but it all had to do with the kind of things that a silverback needs to do out in the wild, and we weren’t in the wild, we were in a zoo. That was Jojo’s whole thing. I guess it made some sense as he had been captured as a juvenile out of the wild. He had memories and felt he should live the same way in confinement.
Neither Jojo nor Jock ever gave me a teddy bear however. We already know why Jojo didn’t, but Jock? Why not a Teddy Gorilla?
I think the reason that Jock didn’t give me a teddy bear, is because he thought it would make me too soft and I would get pushed around. He told me stories of apes he met during his life, and some of them had females that would beat them up sometimes, they were so soft. It’s not good to be a soft silverback, even in a zoo.
Thanks for reading!
