The Ferns Family

My Family

It is a curiously disturbing yet telling fact that I owe much of my existence to the number 72. You see:

Way down in the Congoland (um, actually that would be Mumbai, India), lived a happy chimpanzee (that would be Ruthie, in the middle). She loved a monkey (and that would be my namesake, Norm Sr.) with a long tail (Lordy, how she loved him!). Each night he would find her there, swinging in the coconut tree (you should probably take that literally), and the monkey gay (the happy kind), at the break of day, loved to hear his chimpie say:

"Aba, daba, daba, daba, daba, daba, dab", said the chimpie to the monk, "Baba, daba, daba, daba, daba, daba, dab", said the monkey to the chimp. All night long they'd chatter away, all day long there were happy and gay, swinging and singing in their hunky-tonkey way. "Aba, daba, daba, daba, daba, daba, dab", means "Monk, I love but you." "Baba, daba, dab," in monkey talk means "Chimp, I love you, too." Then the big baboon one night in June (March), he married them and very soon, they went upon their aba, daba honeymoon.

...

Well, okay, that doesn't really have anything to do with the number 72, but whatever; the point is, Mum 'n' Dad got together, had Raquel and Ryan (and me!) and that's the basic story of my family.