No more monkey business
- posted: 27 Nov. 2007
- scrollopinion@byui.edu
When I was a little kid in Africa, I used to love watching the monkeys in the zoo. I remember pressing my face right up against the bars of a cage to see an orangutan looking right back at me.
Usually though, I would watch the monkeys casually go about their exciting leisure activities — a chimpanzee peeling and eating bananas or a couple of baboons diligently picking and eating the fleas from each others’ backs.
As much as I liked the monkeys, I had a hard time believing we humans could evolve from such primitive animals, no matter what the Discovery Channel said.
That is, until last week in sacrament meeting, when I witnessed something that transported me back in time to my zoo-going days, and I realized Darwin was onto something.
There I was trying to pay attention to the sacrament talks when the couple several rows in front of me took a break from cuddling and began to groom each other. I watched in disgust as the male began running his fingers through the female’s short blond hair, trying to fix a spot that wouldn’t lie flat. At one point, he actually tried the old granny trick of licking his hand and using his own saliva as hair product to smooth down her hair.
Next, the couple took turns scratching each others’ backs and whispering in each others’ ears before settling down to gaze contentedly into each others’ eyes. Maybe this behavior is acceptable on Planet of the Apes, but among we civilized folk, I wish people would act more, well, civilized.
Sitting there in sacrament meeting, I asked myself if I was annoyed because I did not have a mate of my own, and the honest answer was, “No.” I’m not complaining about couples in general, only those who insist on being revoltingly cuddly in sacrament meeting, detracting from the Spirit for those around them. Let’s face it, instead of being focused on the speakers, they are only focused on each other.
Unfortunately, this is an epidemic across campus, and I have witnessed many other couples resorting to these primitive primate patterns in church meetings and devotionals.
To these couples I say, please remember that you are not alone — if we, the other members of the congregation, wanted to observe such behavior, we would visit the zoo instead. 
