I'm not sure if anyone is ever learning. They can hear me, I know, for I get replies and head nodding, but the understanding seems to disappear less than a day later. It seems frustrating, like speaking into the wind.
But at least the wind is listening.
So, another story them, for those who can pick it out over the noise...
There is a spot in the damp jungle places that, given enough rain in the wet and pouring seasons, will flood for a while. And when the water pulls away it leaves a large patch of dark mud. One bright morning, a playful monkey came down from his trees into the patch and began rolling and playing and frolicking and cooling himself off in the thick, dark mud. Moments later, another monkey came out from the bushes, and began doing the same thing, but the monkey from the trees took offence to this new intruder.
"Away, away," demanded the tree monkey, "I was here first! This is my patch!" He scooped up a huge pile of mud, and threw it right into the face of the newcomer.
"Filthy tree monkey! This is my patch, it's closer to the ground, and therefore my bushes! I've more a right to it than you!" And he grabbed mud from his feet and tossed it at the tree monkey.
"Bushes! Bushes! Lazy monkey, does not climb trees!" Another couple handfuls of mud from the ground and again, threw them at the other.
"Afraid, afraid hiding in the trees!" was the reply, as more mud was tossed at the offender.
the monkeys continued to screech and curse at each other, throwing slurs and insults at each other almost as much as they did the dark thick mud. They continued all day, scooping the mud from their feet and throwing it at the other monkey. They threw it straight, then they began to toss it, then began to lob it... for as they yelled and threw, the sun rose high in the sky and started to harden the mud slowly. They did not notice the mud was slower to slide back under their feet, and they were each forming a hole around them.
But they did not stop. They dug and threw when they were knee deep. They dug and threw when they were waist deep. They dug and threw when they were shoulder deep. They even dug and threw when the lip of their holes were over their heads, and then they paused... but only for a moment, because in the quiet, they heard the panting and puffing of the other monkey even if they could not see them. And when, in the quiet, one of them would start speaking, it would turn into arguing, then shouting, then, inevitably, they would start clawing at the dirt and rocks at their feet and throw it blindly up and out their hole in the direction of the insults.
It was many weeks later when a passing jaguar came upon the field, now hard dirt after weeks of sunny bright weather. There, he found two deep deep holes near each other with a dead monkey far at the bottom. They had dug and thrown so much, neither could not climb back out before starving.