Toole claims Tarzan ascendency

Globe-scorching journalist Melvin Bedwetter Toole claims to be a direct descendent of Tarzan the Ape Man (aka Tarzan of the Apes). The skinny Toole, weighing in at 97 pounds says he learned to fly through the trees and call to the elephants while visiting Tarzan at family get togethers in equatorial Africa after the war.

How well these statements gel with recent history remains unclear but we do know that on the sixth day God created Tarzan and Jane, then He rested. Toole showed up some years later under a mushroom, with no welcoming parental guardians, a bastard in the dark. That’s all there is for proof.

Jane, whose scantily clad outfits predated puritanical movie restrictions on the silver screen, recounted the day the treehouse lovers met. He took me swimming and explained that his ape family “lives up here in the trees because lions eat lunch on the ground.” That made enough sense for me to blow off my autonomous waitress job in Britain and move in. My years as an exotic dancer didn’t hurt either and kept us both entertained during the rainy season.”

Jane added that the young Toole never perfected the infamous and primitive Tarzan elephant call or climb trees barefoot.   

“His loin cloth was always falling down so I bought him a set of fire engine red suspenders at the bazaar but he almost hung himself on a limb tree the first day out. Fortunately his monkey friends stole the elastic braces (Br.) and the loin cloth averting a tragedy of epic proportions.

After ample consideration Toole had gone on the record as questioning the taste and versatility of donning suspenders in the jungle uttering his famous words, “We’re looking for realism not comfort here.”

Back to the genealogy: The twisted lineage is quite clear up to the point when the original Tarzan (the aristocrat) disappears in Equatorial Africa, swinging in the trees like his Black and Tan cousins at the hands of the IRA in 1921

Things continued to fall apart here after the Earl of Cheshire married Betty, a lady in waiting to the Cliffside Cod Club, related by unfortunate challenge to Guy Fawkes and Squire Mary Beth Lance, of Nugge-thyme.

That makes Toole the great or great great grandson of Tarzan according to the family that has survived civil and military strife in Africa. Even after many decades no one has contested his tree house architecture or a hefty inheritance of bananas and mangoes.