Ridiculous sadness monkey

 

There once was a monkey—not an ordinary one, but the embodiment of absurd sorrow. With drooping eyes, a banana perpetually slipping from his hand, and a tail that curled like a question mark, he wandered the jungle as the “Ridiculous Sadness Monkey.” No one quite understood why he was sad. Perhaps he missed a coconut he’d never tasted. Maybe he longed for the sound of rain on tin, though he lived under leaves. Or it could’ve been that existential emptiness one gets when all the bananas are ripe, and nothing is left to complain about.

The jungle animals tried everything. The parrots told jokes in fifty dialects. The jaguar brought him a bouquet of freshly mauled pineapples. Even the sloth offered a rare hug (slow-motion, of course). Still, the monkey sighed. A deep, theatrical sigh that rattled the branches and made the frogs question their life choices.

He wasn't just sad—he was absurdly sad. He wore a tiny, ill-fitting top hat, and sometimes played a broken ukulele with three strings, strumming blues that made the toucans cry. When asked why he was sad, he’d look skyward and whisper, “Because the moon will never know the taste of mango.”

It became a jungle legend. Monkeys from distant canopies would swing by just to witness his melodrama. He once wept for a full hour over a crushed leaf. Another time, he mourned a cloud shaped like a lost love.

Yet, there was something beautiful in his nonsense. The Ridiculous Sadness Monkey reminded everyone that emotions didn’t have to make sense to be real. That it’s okay to feel deeply about small things—or nothing at all. And maybe, just maybe, in his ridiculous sadness, he made the jungle a little more human.