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Perhaps I Was Afraid it Wanted to Grind my Organs

Blog's feature on the Organ Grinder Pizza Parlor is a fantastic memoir for a Pacific Northwest motherlode of childhood terror and psychological damage. There is little that I can add, beyond reiterating how damned scared I was of that Demon Monkey.

On that note, I present a verbatim transcript of an audio tape recorded one early '80's evening around the dinner table in the Atkinson household. It provides some first-hand evidence of the paralyzing terror that fucking Organ Grinder monkey inspired in me as a toddler. (And, as an aside, there's a great lesson in effective sibling mockery from one of the masters of the craft, Michael Atkinson.)

OPEN ON THE ATKINSON FAMILY KITCHEN, EVENING, CIRCA MAY 1981:

ROLAND (father): Jude, did you scare us up a babysitter? For tomorrow night?

JUDY (mother): Yeah.

ROLAND: Great.

JUDY: We’re set.

MIKE (age 6): Where you going tomorrow night?

ROLAND: We’re going to the Organ Grinder Pizza Place.

MIKE: I’m gonna stay home?

ROLAND: Yeah, you’ll stay home. Yeah, and Danny, too. He really doesn’t like it.

MIKE: Like what?

ROLAND: The Organ Grinder Pizza Place. Makes him cry.

[Adult laughter, BABY DAN whines.]

MIKE: The reason why is…

JUDY: He doesn’t like that monkey.

MIKE: Yeah.

GRANDMA ELAINE: I think he thinks the monkey’s gonna come out and do something…

ROLAND: He really just hates that monkey.

[Toddler chatter]

ROLAND: He’s shaking his head again.

GRANDMA ELAINE: Maybe he thinks it’s real.

[BABY DAN starts crying.]

JUDY: No, you’re not going to the Organ Grinder.

ROLAND: You’re not going, dear, it’s okay. Don’t you wanna eat your ice cream?

[Continued crying.]

ROLAND: You’re not going anywhere, it’s okay.

MIKE: He sees the monkeys!

[Continued crying.]

ROLAND: Hey, you’re gonna stay at home, where everything’s fine. Don’t you want to eat your ice cream?

[Crying. Bawling!]

ROLAND: Look at this good ice cream. Mmm.

BABY DAN: No! No!

GRANDMA ELAINE: He’s so upset!

ROLAND: Mmmm, that’s good.

BABY DAN: No! No! Lemme sit down!

JUDY: Poor guy.

MIKE: [mocking] Lemme sit down! Lemme sit down!

BABY DAN: Lemme eat it!

MIKE: [mocking] Lemme eat it!

ROLAND: Okay. No – it’s Danny’s ice cream!

BABY DAN: No me!

MIKE: No me!

[REPEAT 4x]

ROLAND: Okay, Dan, you win.

Posted by FLOG at April 17, 2004 1:33 AM | TrackBack