Friday 9 March 2012

The Penguin Race

I recently bought this toy for Jessica and Reuben.


Well, Reuben is allowed to watch it. Only Jessica is allowed to touch the penguins and woe betide anyone else caught clutching one of them.

I don't know how long the penguin race has been around for. It must be decades. I remember desperately wanting one in the 1980s. Now, over twenty years later, my dream has been fulfilled. Dreams can come true people. At last, I share a house with racing penguins.

Sadly, my dream did not include the awful, awful squawking noise that the things makes. But still, dreams always come at a price. 'Be careful of the thing you want, you'll get it,' as my grandmother used to say darkly.

The penguins hop up the steps and then skedaddle, pell mell, down the slide. There are three penguins, red, blue and black.

Jessica has scratched away the eyes of our red penguin. Her initial chants of, "weeeeeeee" and "wait for me" have been replaced by a slightly more sinister version which consists of "no eyes, no eyes" when the red penguin mounts the stairs.

I don't know what poor old Mr. Red did to deserve this fate. Perhaps he looked at her funny? Got too cocky? We'll never know.

So he now hops and slides around in the dark.

And this tortuous metaphor is finally about to reach its conclusion. You may breathe a sigh of relief.

I don't think my life is that different from the penguin race. I wish it could be more accurately represented by something elegant or charming. But . . . it feels somehow right that my life boils down to a cheap, plastic toy. That makes hideous squawking noises.

We can't all have grand lives. Some of us are just stuck being penguins in a eternal race that is never won or lost. We can't even change our position in the running order. We race. Until our batteries give out. And if we're lucky we get to keep the stickers that represent our eyes.

I have a feeling that me and Old No Eyes Red aren't that different. When I see him hopping and sliding gaily away, blindly, I have a pang of fellow feeling. Because I'm doing the same, hopping and sliding. Sometimes it's scary, sometimes it's plain boring and sometimes, just sometimes, it's exhilarating. To slide down into the dark, plummeting, wondering if something will change this time.

If we'll be snatched up and have our eyes have scratched off for instance? Like Mr. Red.

We might go whizzing down breathlessly expecting things, two babies for example. And something terrible and strange will happen and our expectations will be stretched and twisted. We'll get to the end of the race and we'll have only one. Or none at all.

But regardless, we'll soon be hopping up those stairs once again. There is no help for it. Because the race doesn't end at that point. Your eyes might be scratched off. Your baby might have died. But that darn penguin race, well, it simply doesn't care. Up you hop, once again.

Or perhaps, perhaps, something good will happen on this particular slide down?
I'm not going to rule it out. Not yet.

7 comments:

  1. I no longer dream of a grand life - I just want a bog-standard little slice of normal... the basics: a home, a husband, a family I get to raise, and just enough money to see us through. I feel like we've earned that. But the fear of what's round the corner... whether it's happiness or pain... will that fear ever subside?

    ReplyDelete
  2. When I look back two or three years ago I realize I just never could have seem this life coming. But here it is and here I stand.. not knowing what will come tomorrow either.
    hugs Cath... and thanks for the penguin game trip down memory lane..

    ReplyDelete
  3. I've never seen the penguin race before, but I am looking at it rather jealously (squawking noises and all). This is a marvelous metaphor, and I love the direction of this post, the way it slides down to it's end. It fills me with questions. I wonder if those who have grand lives know that their lives are grand. I wonder if a blind penguin might actually have more fun on the slides. I wonder if I'll get to keep my eyes.

    And I hope that a goodly portion of the race leads up to something good.

    Hop, hop, hop.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Ah the penguin race. It LOOKS fun but the noise! Oh it's awful. I also wonder if Mr Red has more fun somehow, not being able to see what is coming?

      Delete
  4. "And if we're lucky we get to keep the stickers that represent our eyes."
    You're brilliant, Catherine. I laughed out loud at this line, but only because if I didn't, I might have cried. Your posts have a knack of doing that to me.
    I can relate to this so, so much. We bought Angus a remote control yellow digger today. It was plastic and cheap and already looks like it won't see out the weekend, but Simon especially had many of the same thoughts you've just put down for us here.
    xo

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I'm glad that you and Simon have had similar thoughts. When I read this back to myself, later in the day, I thought that perhaps it didn't make much sense at all!

      Delete
  5. At the heart of it, there are likely to be moments of blank misgiving in which he finds that the civilization of which he is a part leaves a dusty taste in his mouth.

    He may be very busy with many things, but he discovers one day that he is no longer sure they are worth doing.

    He has been much preoccupied; but he is no longer sure he knows why. He has become involved in an elaborate routine of pleasures; and they do not seem to amuse him very much.

    He finds it hard to believe that doing any one thing is better than doing any other thing - or, in fact, that it is better than doing nothing at all.

    It occurs to him that it is a great deal of trouble to live,

    and that even in the best of lives, the thrills are few and far between.

    He begins more or less consciously to seek satisfactions, because he is no longer satisfied,

    and all the while he realizes

    that the pursuit of happiness

    was always

    a most unhappy quest.

    {Walter Lippmann}

    *****

    The penguins know it, and we follow them down.

    Slip sliding away,

    Cathy in Missouri

    ReplyDelete