It's Important to Make these Things Clear

While idly conversing at work.

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ME: Man, I feel terrible…I’ve got some sort of illness bred in the heat of central Africa—

COWORKER (interjecting): You have AIDS?

ME: And then it came over here on a monkey boat.

(Laughter, questions about what was so funny.)

COWORKER: He said he was sick from an African monkey boat.

(Pause while I consider my words.)

ME: By which I mean a boat with actual monkeys on it; that was not a racist comment.