Growing Up Human: Harry D. Ape

Many years ago, when one of my daughters was still a little girl, I took her to the zoo. We saw a gorilla enjoying the warming rays of the sun on a chilly autumn day. For one brief moment, we three were doing the same thing, relaxing together in the welcomed rays of the sun. Could I tell her that at one time in the distant past, our direct ancestors were no more advanced than the gorilla? Would she understand if informed that the gorilla was her relative and that she was even more closely related to a chimpanzee? If it were possible to roll back the hands of time under some ideal set of circumstances, this would be my story, both now, then. This is how I’d tell her “it happened.” Harry D. Ape is biographical. It is autobiographical. It is about no one in particular, and it is about everyone, including our “relatives.” It is fact, and it is myth. It explores who “we” are. Fact and myth describe who we are. It is hoped that after reading it, the reader will never look at a human, a chimp, or a great ape in the same way again.