When I was younger, my parents bought me a stuffed monkey doll. It wasn’t exactly a sock monkey, nor was it of the fabled wish-granting variety. With my aptitude for anthropomorphic company, I took a quick liking to him (Being a young boy, naturally the monkey was a he.). His name was Dirty. The doll became another appendage to me, and I dragged him everywhere. If I was caught in the act of some household felony, the first of my rights to be taken were my Dirty privileges.

Back in those days, my grandparents (Dan and Sally) used to watch my brother and I while my parents worked, even on days my parents had off, we’d ask to spend the night at Grandma’s (or Papa’s, we never did settle on who had proper ownership). I had many sleepovers there, spending most of the night in front of the Sega Genesis (or more accurately, the TV, which the Genesis was plugged into, duh) with Dirty laying cruciform beside me.

I don’t know why, but at that age I had a bizarre mean streak in me. One day, my father came home with a demo disc for new Playstation releases (Remember those? I hardly do.). I later did something totally spectacular with this new distraction, and ran downstairs to inform my father of this breakthrough in my gaming development (which would be cut short at the age of 13, when I gave it up to focus on my first novel), leaving my brother alone with the console. Returning to the upstairs television, I found a shattered disc inside the Playstation’s tray. This casualty was the beginning of a 10 year rivalry. When he was two, my brother hit me in the back of the head with a 2x4 and claimed that it was actually me who had done this to him. This continued until he was old enough to be hit back. (I now interpret this as an attempt on his part to earn my attention, which in a stroke of grim irony, was successful.) A less tragic example of this pre-pubescent violence was when I was visiting my cousins at their home with my grandmother. Their home was squatted by a lake in the middle of the woods. I took this opportunity to test Dirty by rubbing him against the bark of a tree, which tore right through the fabric of his leg. In a rare fit of remorse, I burst into tears and begged Grandma to fix him. We took him back to her house that day and she sewed Dirty back to health.

The final memory I have of Dirty was in a dreaded Garbage Bag Day (which isn’t the same as the “Garbage Day!” meme from Silent Night Deadly Night II). On Garbage Bag Day, probably my least favorite holiday second only to Columbus Day (Seriously, screw that guy.), my mother would go through my unkempt room and discard of anything she deemed an obstruction of tidiness in a genocide of toys and trash alike. As anyone who can recognize narrative structure would tell you, one of the countless victims to the Great Trashening was of course Dirty. My parents were in agreement to toss my childhood friend and I can remember calling my grandmother, sobbing for her to protect Dirty. She promised to do what she could, and then asked me to hand the phone to my mom. That’s the last file I can draw from my memory bank on Dirty the monkey.

In 2009, Grandma was diagnosed with lung cancer. She was a heavy smoker as far as I can remember, and from what I’ve been told, she picked this habit up when she was around the age I am now. (One of my earliest memories is stealing my grandmother’s cigarette cartridges and throwing them away, which was also one of the only times I can remember her scolding me.) She did not accept Chemotherapy and was resigned to spend her final days at home with her family. My grandparents were the hosts of an annual Christmas Eve get-together, and we were able to have one final reunion with her (or at all, for that matter). That Christmas, I got my first guitar. She was really proud of me for deciding to pick up an instrument, although it’s been nearly two years since I’ve played more than the intro to a song. If my memory serves me right (I’m terrible at dates of both the calendar and romantic variety.), she passed away in February 2011, a few weeks before my Sixteenth birthday. (She would often boast about how when I turned Sixteen, when I had my license, I would come pick her up and we would go to the book store together. Although I don’t give anyone but myself credit for my writing, she was an undeniable influence. On a final parenthetical note, I am Twenty-One and still without a proper license.) She left us all with typed letters of farewell and personal mementos. Mine was Dirty, not a doll similar in likeness, but the real Dirty, with stitches and all. I don’t know how she managed to hold onto him for all these years, let alone find the darn thing! I would say she asked my mother to pass him onto her in secret, but she claims to this day to be just as shocked by the revelation as I am. I don’t think the idea of my grandma dumpster-diving is too likely, but it’s about the closest thing I’ve got to an answer. Of course, I’ve kept ahold of Dirty since his reclamation. He got to tag along for the premiere of an indie flick I acted in last year and is now at home on the desk I write on.