Three Wise Pigs

Sandy Kinnee
December 2020

One of my earliest puzzlements was of a small carving found while exploring a table drawer at my grandmothers.  Most first-time experiences eventually made sense after a time, for example the light switch.  What I found in the drawer was nothing like a light switch, but I will tell you about light switches before I return to the carved object.

I mentioned I was very young, so young that everything was new to me until I experienced it.  Looking out any window was, as I was told, the rest of the world.  Most of the time when I looked out a window was something I learned was called daylight.  Other times when nothing out in the world could be seen was called nighttime.  Inside our little home we could choose daylight or nighttime by touching something on the wall, just out of my reach.  Eventually I would learn it was called a light switch. It was complicated, but eventually I would understand how this might make night and day inside.  Comprehending that there was some relationship with what happened to the features of the rest of the world took longer.

Having observed tiny finger-like things high in a wall near doorways and whether that finger was pointing toward the ceiling or the floor, I could deduce whether it was supposed to be day or night in the room.  When looking out at the world outside, it was nighttime, and I could not see the finger on the wall near the door, I could guess it was pointed toward the floor.

In my grandmother’s house there were no fingers pointing toward either floor or ceiling. There were little buttons.  Two buttons, one above the other: one like a bellybutton, the other like your tongue sticking out.  It did not take me long to see that if you pushed the tongue it would become a bellybutton. If the bellybutton was the one on top, the room was daylight.

My little brain was not often so active, my eyes not so curious.  Much of what I experienced was while I was passive and it swept over me, unnoted.  I was accepting and unquestioning most of the time, until I discovered the little carving.

I was just pawing through a dining room drawer at grandmas.  I was old enough to know what a monkey was. Monkeys were funny. They did silly things. They made me giggle.  These monkeys caused me to smile when I saw they were monkeys. But they bewildered me at what they were doing.  These monkeys were something like the fingers on the wall or the two buttons, except there were three.  There was no pointing to the floor or ceiling, no bellybutton or tongue, there were three things.  Three was more problematic than two.  What was this?

Grandma was baking cookies when I carried the carving to her.  She laughed at what I had found.  She did her best to tell me that these were three wise monkeys.  One each covered its eyes, mouth, or ears.

I saw three monkeys and was unable to picture one and the same monkey who demonstrated that a wise person should see no evil, say no evil, or hear no evil. I simply did not know that this was a monkey who was making three different gestures, none of which seemed particularly monkeylike, or silly.  What were “evil” or “wise”?  The entire idea was utterly lost upon me and would remain an abstraction beyond my grasp or interest.  I saw three confusing monkeys.  I put the carving back in the drawer.  From time to time, while at grandma’s house I would check on them.  They remained an enigma. So, enough about those three monkeys. I am sorry there was nothing I could reveal about them. They are no longer in that drawer.  Grandma’s been gone these fifty plus years.

Instead, I shift to the three pigs.  This is my mother’s tale about her father and his two brothers.  No, they were not piggies.  The three brothers had pooled what little money they each had to invest in a venture.  They bought three little pigs and paid a farmer to raise the pigs until ready for market.  From time to time they checked on the progress of the three pigs.   Eventually, the pigs were ready to be sold.

However when the pigs were sold his brothers split the money, giving him nothing.  What was the meaning of this? They told him, only two pigs went to market.

His pig died.

Actually, I am pretty certain my mother was retelling an old Irish joke and that there never were any pigs, let alone one that died.  As for the carving of the three monkeys, how is it that either wisdom or recognition of evil would be gauged by a monkey or a tiny boy?

The little boy who learned to understand about turning the lights on and off could at best see three foolish monkeys who were not taking proper advantage of what their senses were telling them.  Three foolish monkeys choosing to not see or hear or speak about their experiences.

Monkeys are monkeys and neither evil nor wise, same with pigs.