We have been celebrating my daughter’s birthday for the better part of a week (who says it can’t be birthweek instead of birthday?). My in-laws gave her a set of Boom-Its. What are Boom-Its? you ask. Playing Boom-It is pretty much like playing badminton, except the paddles, or whatever you call them, make very loud noises when you strike the birdie (or, again, whatever you call it).
As children will do, my daughter was randomly hitting things with said paddles. She began to hit balloons at one point (birthday balloons of course). And as she did so, for reasons which I still don’t fully understand, she began to repeatedly say the phrase, ‘Beach Monkey.’ She said it with enthusiasm: ‘Beach Monkey, Beach Monkey, Beach Monkey!’
As we say in the south, I got very tickled at this. I asked her why she said it. No explanation. She just said it. I liked it. I told her it sounded like the name of a book and that I would therefore write her a story about Beach Monkey.
I have written stories for my daughters before, and I have never let anyone other than my daughters read them. But this time I thought, ‘hey, why not make it public?’ I’m still in the process of writing it so it may take some time. And please remember that I’m writing this story for a 4-year-old!
