I sometimes think how it would be to be a famous journalist writing famous articles for a famous newspaper.  I’d like to go undercover and uncover something really juicy like that cat food is really fish food, and dog food is really cat food, and human food is really dog food, or else I’d like to interview a sign language ape.

I don’t think my famous journalist career for my famous newspaper would work out like I’d want it to work out though.  If I were to actually interview a sign language ape, I’d probably start by saying, Hello Sign Language Ape, thank you for coming to let me interview you.  Would you like a banana?  And by then I’d already know that I’d done something wrong because just because it’s an ape, it doesn’t mean it automatically wants a banana, right?  What is that, racist? Apeist?  Then I’d probably eat five or six bananas in a row as fast as I could so that the sign language ape didn’t get offended about me offering it bananas because we all like bananas and we’re all human even if a sign language ape isn’t a human, right?

By then, I’d already know that the ape didn’t like me.  It would look at me and I would just know.  I’d try to smile at it really big like you smile at babies when you’re trying to scare them.

Just to be respectful, so that the ape knew that I thought it was smart and it wanted more than to just sit around and eat bananas all day, even though that’s really all I want, I’d probably say something really pretentious like: I would like to cordially enquire about the nature of your thoughts, are they organized temporally? If so, what are your ponderings your potential personal future?

Someone would have already told me that sign language apes can only know about one-hundred words, but I’d probably phrase it that way anyway, and the sign language ape would be confused and annoyed and think I wasn’t a professional famous journalist writing professional famous articles for a professional famous newspaper, and I’d wonder why didn’t I stick to writing about shark food really being lizard food, and I’d try to make my smile even bigger like you do to make babies cry.

I’d probably be flustered at that point, and I probably wouldn’t be able to think of any other way to phrase my question about the sign language ape’s desires for the future other than to ask the sign language ape, What do you want?

There was that kind of famous book about the telepathic ape a while back that I never got around to reading, but from what my friend told me, the ape in that book was pretty wise, and so maybe my sign language ape would say something like that it wanted harmony between humans and animals and peace and love and eternal happiness for everyone all the time forever.  That’s what I’d want it to say, but it would probably just say it wanted a banana, which would be bad because I would have already eaten all the bananas, and I’d probably be feeling pretty sick because of it.

I’d probably have a granola bar in my bag though because I always forget to eat until it’s too late.  I’d offer the granola bar to the sign language ape, and it would take it and I would think maybe this isn’t going so bad, and I’d smile big again until my face hurt and until the sign language ape had trouble with the granola bar wrapper.

By then, the sign language ape would probably be just as frustrated with me as I was with me, and maybe it would eat the granola bar with the wrapper on out of spite.  The zoo keeper would have to rush in and save it from choking to death or maybe it would choke to death and either way, that would probably be the end of the interview, and as a famous journalist, my famous newspaper article for the famous newspaper would probably only say, I asked a sign language ape what it wanted and it said it wanted a banana, and we all knew that already.