Primate games.

The other morning I was sitting on the hotel rooftop, after an early rise from a satisfying slumber. I sat there drinking coffee with freedom and possibly absense of thought, enjoying the dry hot air and slow melting breeze. I casually watched our waiter walk to the edge of the rooftop and look out over the valley of the city that thrusts from the earth like a jagged mosaic. The waiter, a polite but very reserved man, with six fingers on each hand began to grin. At first there was a slight hesitation, and a patient anticipation as watched something unfold. The grin split and became a smile as his face lightened and then shook with a genuine laugh. I looked up from my coffee and he looked at me. With one hand he points at what he's looking at, and with the other he beckons me over.

'This ought to be interesting', I thought to myself as the man had kept every glance and communciation with me 'strictly business', although we had been staying there for days. With a curious grin I got out of my chair and sauntered over to him as only a man on vacation can; loose and lazy with a constant languid expression.

My eyes adjusted to the brightness of the light and I followed the direction of his outstretched arm and extra finger to the rooftop of a few houses away where I saw the theatre which amused him so. A family of monkeys, with warm white hair and charcoal faces jumped and swang and screamed with shrieks of amusement and pure delight as they pulled all the clothes off some lady's clothes line and proceeded to swing them around, throw them onto the street, and have a few rounds of 'tug-of-war'. They galloped and bounced over the rooftop, hanging from the line with socks in their mouths and skirts in their hands destroying the family's efforts.

But together, Fingers and I just stared and laughed. We laughed from the belly. We laughed round, and we laughed wholesomely... and as for the monkeys... well they laughed with us.