They say you can really screw a kid up in the first few years of his life. I mean, that's when the kid will develop language and socialization skills, learn to walk, read, eat. There is so much to learn during this time, and they say if kids don't learn what they need to, then they won't ever learn it. What I mean is, a one- or two-year-old kid has a brain that soaks up language like a little sponge, but an eighteen-year old has a brain that's more like a brick, and stuff tends to roll right out. This isn't a big secret, I mean, everyone knows about it, and that's why we always try to teach kids stuff. Mostly.

This is why I wonder about Tarzan. In the movies he was king of the jungle, but in real life I doubt that he would have made it. Supposedly, Tarzan was found as a very young infant by gorillas and raised by them. I don't know a whole lot about gorillas but I do know that they're very intelligent animals and have a pretty complex social structure. They also have very specific physical attributes adapted to their environment: real long arms, short, stubby legs, prehensile toes, incredibly strong.

I don't know enough about them to guess what a gorilla might do to a baby it didn't like. I saw this one Tarzan movie once where there was this "bad" gorilla that was always bullying him and Tarzan had to just outsmart him all the time. I don't know if that would really happen, but I doubt it (the outsmarting part, not the bullying part). And I wonder how smart you have to be to have Uncle Joe just rip your arm out of the socket. Or what would keep Uncle Joe from just getting rid of you before you even get old enough to be that smart.

You know, a gorilla baby at six months might climb up a tree and swing from a vine, but a human baby at that age ain't getting up that tree. That can't be good for his socialization skills. The gorillas would probably think he was retarded and Tarzan would grow up with low self-esteem. In fact, in gorilla, "Tarzan" probably translates as "slow".

Tarzan would never develop language. Ever. he would never be accepted in any human society that frowns on its members picking bugs off each other to eat, or flinging their own crap at each other. I highly doubt that Tarzan would have learned to communicate with every other animal in the jungle, either.

Tarzan had a spoken vocabulary that consisted of that annoying, ear-splitting jungle shriek and the word "oongowa". Depending on his circumstances, those two words meant everything from "Big Elephant, come trample these jungle natives trying to kill me," to "Go away, Lion, you suck," to the always-popular "Here I come swinging on this vine! Get the hell out of my way!" As unlikely as this seems, it does represent a much more efficient use of language than regular humans have ever been able to develop.

Well, now I have to go back here. Tarzan might possibly have developed language, with the help of someone like Doctor Doolittle, or someone like Jane Goodall, that Horse Whisperer guy (but he would have to be a gorilla whisperer), or possibly some of those gorillas in California who know sign language.

I don't even want to think about what would turn him on. I imagine it might be kind of like me looking at Helena Bonham Carter in her ape-makeup, only multiplied by like a bajillion percent. I know that if he ever got out of the jungle, he peobably wouldn't like a girl all frilly and fancy and perfumey; in fact, he would probably hate it when Jane took a bath. I know that's kind of gross, but we are talking about a guy who was raised by apes.

Hollywood likes to imagine that Tarzan is a man of peace who is baffled by our violent ways. I mean, every time you see a modern version of Tarzan, he's always this environmentalist hippy peace-freak. Like, he would just look bewildered when a hunter tried to shoot a lion, and say "Why hunter-man try to hurt Tarzan friend Lion with bang-stick? What Lion ever do to hunter-man?" But I don't know that lions and gorillas get along that well, do they? Maybe Tarzan would have more likely slapped the hunter on the back and said "That lion try eat Tarzan 157 times just in week! Good riddance, Lion, you son of bitch!"

Its a nice image to picture Tarzan swinging in a hammock eating bananas, but in real life he would probably be sleeping in the dirt and eating grubs and maggots he dug up.

I think it's that "Circle of Life" thing again.