The Times op-ed page today features a Halloween reminiscence from a transgendered professor who grew up in a genuinely haunted house. On top of that, through secondary asides, we learn that journalist Al Hunt grew up in the house before the writer’s family bought it, and that Al Hunt’s family kept a monkey named Jesus locked in a bathroom on the third floor, and only let him out once a year on his birthday, which was of course Christmas.
And now I will never see Al Hunt’s byline again without thinking of a monkey locked in a bathroom.
People are always much stranger than you imagine, even if you have a vivid imagination.