Paradise Preoccupied

What do my mother, Liz Taylor and a chimp named Jiggs have in common?

They were all born in 1932 and recently celebrated 75th birthdays. That’s a lot of candles.

How cool would it have been to have a party to fete all three? My mom, of course, would be a bit star struck … after all, she grew up on Tarzan movies and everyone knows all the girls were really watching for the scenes with Cheeta (He was SO cute!) … and would have fretted over Liz, knowing too much about her health problems over the years.

There’d have been a lot of common ground, so conversation would flow smoothly, if not evenly; Jiggs being all non-verbal, you know. Mom and Ms. Taylor could yack for a week on ex-husbands alone. Then, there’s another week on weddings … and my mom did have the hots for Eddie Fisher way back when. (With a few twists of the path, Carrie and I could have been half-sisters, as Mom would not have turned him down.)

Jiggs would have heard ALL about me from my mother. She’s well proud of my passion for non-human primates and has been very impressed by the personal relationships I’ve had in the past with some wonderful individuals of the Pan troglodytes persuasion, so I’m sure she’d tell him all about how my good friend, Judy, would draw for me, and how Josie loved tickles.

Maybe, if we start planning now, we’ll be able to pull something together for 2012 when they all turn 80.