Enough with the Penguins!

Dear Shawn,

Tonight, I was watching Blue Planet 2 with my mother when they showed penguins. Mom made a cute little noise and looked over at me with the sweetest face. We watched and listened as we learned about chinstrap penguins. She noticed that in the shot of what looked like a billion black and white birds, that they were all facing the same direction, which was into the camera, certainly for the sake of the show. (Who wants to see the backs of a billion chinstraps?) She wondered why this was. Thinking maybe for the warmth of the sun, or some mind-numbing fact that perhaps penguins have a built-in compass and always face (insert direction here), I replied, “So they could look into the camera.” Her failure to laugh at my funny made me wonder if she didn’t, just perhaps, believe me.

Then she turned to me with a serious look and asked, “How did you get into collecting penguins?”

“Really?” I replied, as I waited for her to laugh, or something, to show that she was kidding. No, she was serious. This is the point I might say something about her age, and how people start to lose it when they get older, but I just turned fifty a month ago, and lately, it seems like I can’t remember anyone’s name. In the past two days, I’ve forgotten the names of Robin Williams (that comedian who died a few years ago), Nicole Kidman (that beauty from down under who I used to call my wife, but she just didn’t know it), Kevin Costner (that guy, who played the NASA boss in that movie we watched last night) and a few others I’ve already forgotten again as I write this letter. So I have no room to kid Mom for forgetting why I started to collect penguins, over thirty years ago.

She asked why the big sigh, and I reminded her that this is probably the question I get asked most often, usually followed by, “Do you mean real, live penguins?” to which I love to retort, “Yes, I keep real, live penguins in a huge refrigerated pool in my back yard, which is full of the fish they need to sustain life. You know you love me for my sass! Of course, Mom knows I don’t have live ones, so this time I was spared.

For Mom, I pulled out the shortened, abridged version: In high school, I loved Opus the Penguin and Fleetwood Mac. I had ten, then twenty, then fifty, and at around two-hundred, I decided to go for the record.

“Fleetwood Mac?” she asked.

“Yeah, their Rumors album had penguins on it and they had an album named Penguin.”

She gave me a “Hm” of approval and went back to Blue Planet 2, which was now telling us about the walrus of the Arctic. Then she asked, “What are you going to do with all of your penguins when you die?”

“I’ve told all of my friends that when they leave my funeral, everyone has to take about a dozen or so with them to remember me by.” She thought this was a good idea.

“Well,” she said, “you sure have enough.”

At over 4,000 penguins, I sure do. I may need a few more friends, though!

Gold Dust

Dear Shawn,

There was a dark night I walked around campus listening to Fleetwood Mac's Gold Dust Woman on my Walkman (yeah, still the 1980s!). I'd heard the song a hundred times, but that night, I really heard it...for the first time.

I listened to it over and over that night, while paying attention to the moss hanging from the trees near the dorms, to the stars hanging in the sky, to the breeze flowing through the pines making whooshing noises.

I listened to it time and again that night, hearing the wails, the moans, the emotion, the sorrow and the story. The song simply stole me and I was enthralled at its beauty and majesty. I became gold dust that night. It's never left me. I guess it never will.

Something had been bothering me, some sort of college stress. I don't remember now, I'm sure it was about a test, or some sort of social pressures. I was involved in politics, much as I was in high school, so maybe that was weighing heavily on me. I grabbed my Walkman and that tape and just walked around the darkened campus, listening to Rumors. When I got to Gold Dust Woman, I must  have rewound it tem times that night.

"Wake up in the morning, see your sunrise, lovers go down.
Lousy lovers pick their pray, but they'll never cry out loud...follow those who pale in your shadow."

Today, this song is still one of the highest on my list. Of course, most of Stevie's songs are. There is nothing like the Goddess of Rock and Roll! Her CDs are the only ones that have been in my car for over three years, now. That almost seems wrong. I know how to pick up the pieces and go home. I've done it so many times.