Mystery of the Missing Bongo

Anyone who knows Matthew knows how much he loves his toy Monkey Bongo. He loves all of his stuffed animals but Bongo is his favorite by far. Bongo has been through a lot with Matthew.

• He was the animal Matthew picked to be with him before and after his two ear tube surgeries.
  
• When Matthew was first introduced to his hearing aids, we would pretend to put them on Bongo first and then Matthew would be willing to put them on.
  
• Bongo has been a part of most of his speech therapy sessions and now he accompanies Matthew to preschool in a school district two towns away.
  
• When Matthew wasn't talking much he would still always have a word for Bongo.
  
• When Matthew was being potty trained he would let us know when he felt the urge by saying that Bongo poo pood the potty.
  
• Matthew sleeps with Bongo every night and says, "I love you, Bongo" all the time.

On Tuesday of last week Bongo went missing. We discovered this on Wednesday and we retraced Matthew's steps. We contacted his preschool, the bus operators, and daycare. Through my faulty detective work I assumed Bongo had been lost at daycare. We had the poor teachers at daycare comb the whole facility looking for a toy monkey. (Yes, the toy IS that important to Matthew). Tony even put together a missing poster displayed prominently at the front desk at daycare. After three days of searching for Bongo and nights of Matthew waking up crying at 3AM we decided to give him a replica of Bongo. Friday Matthew was introduced to the new Bongo. We were afraid Matthew would reject the new Bongo but he picked him up immediately and called him new "Shiny Shiny Bongo".

We thought this would be the end to the story but on Monday a child at school with a backpack very similar to Matthew's brought "old" Bongo back to school. Matthew was happy about this and his teacher said that he had both "new" Bongo and "old" Bongo kiss each other. All's well that ends well. I will even have a collection of funny emails from Matthew's godfather Unkie Jude (no relation to Monkey Jude) about reasons that Bongo went missing. Hopefully, some day when Matthew is old enough to understand Sopranos or The Godfather references he will get a big kick out of them.