the curious tale of the penguin from southampton.

I just finished reading The Book of Other People edited by Zadie Smith. The book is a collection of short stories where the assignment to the authors was to create a living being ( i.e., fictional person, animal, I think someone even created a monster). The focus of the creation was to explore character. In the end the collection was like most others; part brilliant, part sleepy, maybe a little muddled somewhere in between, but overall pretty enjoyable. Sales from the book benefit author Dave Eggers's nonprofit literary organization "826 NYC" which helps students from age 6 to 18 develop their creative writing skills. I myself was going to try this little exercise for all you ardent readers, but I really couldn't come up with anything. However, you all are in luck! The craziest thing happened to me this morning on the way to work. I was driving in the ice box [for those of you who don't know, the ice box is my 1996 Chevy Blazer (paid off) that has absolutely no heat what-so-ever] and I saw this Penguin on the side of the road. I swear this is true. The funny thing about it is he was holding up a sign trying to get a ride somewhere. I thought to myself, "how can this be happening"? There is no way I could pass up this opportunity, I mean this was going to make for a fantastic story. Well, I was a few minutes early to work so I thought what the heck, little fellow looks to be harmless. So I pulled off to the side of the road and sure enough he waddled over. The closer he got, I found that I could read what the sign said. It said "Oi". I immediately recognized what it meant. Across the pond in Britain they say Oi to get someones' attention. It's used as an interjection, kind of like "hey". My theories were correct, when he climbed in, he had a British accent. He said, "Alright mate! Blimey, it's potatoes in the mould out there init? A little mork and mindy. Cheers for the ride, I'm working off a Leo Sayer, had a few too many Nelson Mandela's last night". At first I said, uuhh, excuse me? What was that? Then it dawned on me what he was saying. I've read about this before, I thought to myself. He's using Cockney rhyming slang. Cockney rhyming slang is a form of speech that originated in areas of Central London where people would take an expression which rhymes with a word and then use that expression instead of the word. That's just the way some of these brits talk, I thought. Well I did a little translating so we could all know what he said. For the most part he was saying thanks for the ride, and that he thought it was freezing outside, and very windy. Then he said that he was recovering from an all day drinking session the previous day where he consumed a few too many Stella Artois (a popular European Lager). During our 5 to 10 minute drive we had a pretty normal conversation. He told me where he was from, his hobbies, interests and even his favourite foods. He loves Sushi. In the end, I dropped him off at a Starbucks close to where I work. The little bloke just wanted a coffee to start his day off. Who am I to blame him? The funniest thing about this encounter I had with a talking penguin was when he got out of my car, he said it felt a little warmer outside than it did when he was in the car. They don't call it the ice box for nothing.

listening to right now:Punk Rock by Mogwai

jess