MY NEANDERTHAL FRIENDS

My Waco family taught me (or at least tried to) a new game over Thanksgiving called “Poetry for Neanderthals”. It is advertised as “a fun word game with the typical humor of Exploding Kittens.” I didn’t like the idea of kittens being blown up, but I was taking the phrase much too literally. I learned that Exploding Kittens is “a kitty-powered card game […] that functions like a version of Russian Roulette, where the goal is to avoid drawing an Exploding Kitten card.” It sounded like a rather dangerous family activity, but I played the game and learned to talk like a Neanderthal.

In the game, the Neanderthals must talk using words of only one syllable and, if you use more than one you are hit over the head with a club, which fortunately is plastic and full of air.

The game was fun and got me thinking about the Neanderthals. They are supposed to be “an extinct group of archaic humans who inhabited Europe.” 

The men had long, flat skulls and a stocky body, and the skull had large eye sockets and big noses. The jaws and teeth were exceptionally strong, presumably from nibbling on dinosaurs and tough salamanders. Many went to university and majored in engineering.

Being a linguist, I was naturally interested in their language and culture. Fortunately, I met two of them in the dense underbrush near Waco, Texas. Their names were Thug and Thag, both about 40 years old and over six feet tall. They were club-footed and bow-legged and wore kangaroo skin G-strings and carried immense blow guns.

I had learned some Neanderthalese (called Nandernoise in the academic world), so I was anxious to talk to my two new friends.

ME: you gut man, no can klub me.

THUG: you no big man. You old man and skin red. You no got good skin for to eat. Thag and me get you and cook you in big pot.

ME: Plis, no can cook me. Mi got bead and axe for you. No can buy. Is free but no can cook me.

THAG: Mi like cook one foot. Try to eat and see if good.

ME: No, you no cook me. Me good, you let me go. 

I wasn’t kidding of course. I didn’t want these hungry Neanderthals to taste any part of me. I had an idea.

ME: Come my house. Two dog and one cat there. You can cook and eat all.

THUG: What be dog? What be cat?

ME: Dog be good eat. Cat hard to eat. Like big ugly fish. Cat run and hide. Dog no hide. Eat dog and feel good.

THAG: You no can lie at me. Cat good eat and has nice tail. Put on top my head. First me and Thug put dog and cat in pot. If good smell eat fast. Yum yum.

I didn’t know what to do because the cat didn’t belong to me. It belonged to my grandson’s girlfriend. But then I had an idea.

Me: Cat old. Not smell good if cook. Must eat raw.

I knew that cave men did not like raw meat and left if for the orangutangs and I wanted to save the cat. 

ME: Many cat live at big school. You can cook one each day and cook dog same time.

I could see that Thug and Thag were beginning to salivate, having visions of eating the cats and dogs around Baylor University.

THUG: Me can try eat cat. Smell no good but tail be good on top hat. Me give leg to Thag and see him sick. Me eat dog and no be sick.

And that, my friends, is how we once got rid of all the cats at Baylor University during the Neanderthal age. However, during the ice age some anthropologists cloned two cats and they have been breeding ever since. Most live on the north side of the campus, away from the dogs.

Karl Franklin