Hey everyone, it’s Medicine Mondays again. This is going to be a short post about the “Monkey on my Back“.

Monkey on my Back?

Yea.

So basically, this last weekend was both Punahou Carnival weekend and New Year’s Festival weekend. As you can imagine, it was a pretty busy weekend for my wife and I. The kids had a lot of fun on the rides (even though it rained) on both Friday and Saturday. Then they had fun at small New Year’s Festival at the Kahala Mall as well. Kylie did some crafts and we were able to watch the Dragon/Lion Dances from the Wah Ngail Lion Dancers.

A calligrapher was there as well to write some stuff for us in Chinese:

• Five Happiness (luck, rich, longevity, door guard, & money guard) has descended upon this house
• Luck, Prosperity, and Longevity

Here is the calligrapher holding up the Luck, Prosperity, and Longevity one:

She also wrote Kylie’s name for us as well. We were going to have her write Lucas, but he was asleep and there was a long line so we didn’t want to hold everyone else up.

All in all, it was a fun weekend….

Except this morning I woke up with a really stiff neck. Turning one way or another and looking upward kind of hurts.

I took some NSAIDs and I feel little better now, but it’s still kind of stiff. It makes it difficult to type this post even.

So basically, I’m an old man now and all it takes is a carnival and sleeping wrong to put me out of the commission for the day.

What about the monkey?

Oh yes, the huge rasta monkey up there.

Well, apparently my daughter is a carnival game shark. There was this game which you pay two scrip (essentially $1) to play. You get 2 balls to throw into a barrel about 5 feet away and they have to stay in.

Of course the barrel is made of plastic and the ball is pretty large and also made of plastic. The game is designed so that is very difficult to make the ball into the barrel and keep it there. The majority of the time the ball will bounce out.

Classic carnival game stuff.

Either way, Kylie wanted to try it. On her first attempt she missed the barrel because she tried to throw it overhand. On the second ball she got it in, but of course it bounced out.

She wanted to try again, so I tried to explain to her that she has to try be “soft and gentle” in order make the ball stay in. She said “ok” and so we tried again.

The first ball she gently tossed, and apparently she has some nature spin on her throws because the ball went into the barrel, rolled around a bit, and spun around before coming to a rest at the bottom.

I was so happy for her… but she didn’t even react!

She was too concentrated on getting the next one in… and she did it!

The person working the booth had to ask the manager what prize she gets because no one had gotten 2 in that day yet. They wanted to make sure it was the right prize. Of course, the prize was the enormous rasta monkey, in either orange or brown. She chose orange.

Now, after winning the enormous monkey, I had to carry it around for the next 2 hours on my back. It’s not that it was heavy, but more that it was kind of difficult to carry around. Additionally, since it had been raining, I didn’t want to set it down anywhere and get it muddy.

I think that monkey had at least a small part to play in my neck pain today… so that’s why this post is called “The Monkey on my Back.”

TL;DR

I’m old.

Apparently, going to a carnival and sleeping on my neck wrong is enough to give me neck pain and put me out of commission.

My daughter is a carnival game shark.

-Sensei

Agree? Disagree? Questions, Comments and Suggestions are welcome.

You don’t need to fill out your email address, just write your name or nickname.

Like these posts? Make sure to subscribe to get email alerts!