by Zygmunt Nowak-Soli\u0144ski<\/p>\n
Leonard Gimbal lives in a world where everyone talks a lot! His mother constantly squabbling. His father shouts. His half deaf brother Jordan gobbles his words. Sister Kate moans and screeches about her nails and her non-existent boyfriends. The parrot squawks in its cage every time Leonard comes into the front room. The dog, a daft brute, barks most of the time. Things aren\u2019t better at school. His maths teacher scolds him. It\u2019s not his best subject. History, he is glared at and asked questions nonstop. English, the same. And so it goes on. A cacophony also outside at break in classes. He hides from the other kids, which only makes things worse.<\/p>\n
\u2018Where yu bin Leo?\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018Whatcha doin\u2019 Nard?\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018Got a fancy for Stephie?\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018Everyone has.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018Get in the queue.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018Dirty boy.\u2019<\/p>\n
Leonard is \u2018sort\u2019 of small, a bit short for his age, but too strong to be bullied physically. Still, as he hardly says a dickie bird he\u2019s pounced on verbally. Even by some of the girls, who can be very cruel. He\u2019ll be leaving soon, though, so he doesn\u2019t care too much. It\u2019s life at home which is\u2026 bad.<\/p>\n
Over the years, he has many jobs. But is too quiet. Connie, his mum, for once not shouting, said, \u2018I\u2019ll ask him to find you a place. A job there. You know. The ZOO. You go there. Uncle Eddy works in admin. At the ZOO. The Edinburgh one, you know.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u2018Eddy, Leo can\u2019t hold down a job. You know him. People shout at him. And he leaves. He\u2019s sensitive, always has been. He likes the ZOO.\u2019<\/p>\n
Eventually, Leo gets a job at the ZOO in the section that includes penguins. He knows very little about these creatures. His uncle keeps an eye on him.<\/p>\n
He starts as a general cleaner. Given a task, gets on with it. Doesn\u2019t comment or argue. Still lives at home. And is still very quiet. Big brother Jordan joins the army. Father is too busy now to shout at him. Sister Sue Ann still does. Mum, not so much.<\/p>\n
And so the years flew by or tumbled by, but this did not affect Leo very much. He had his work, his colleagues with whom he occasionally speaks, and his friends. The two-legged birds. He found out they were birds later. He did not study the subject; it came to him naturally. And penguins as a population did not communicate with other mammals, for example, Men. Which suited him well. There were quiet years. He became the ZOO authority on penguins, even questioned by famous scholars studying them, but Leo was not a skilled presenter of penguin philosophy and matters associated, so these occasions were few.<\/p>\n
Time passes, and he is now living in the penguin compound, able to copy their movements, walking, and their gestures. He has a small studio at the ZOO where he incubates an egg when the father penguin dies. Fitting in well with all the new generations of penguins. Eats at the ZOO personnel canteen. Hardly speaks to his colleagues but is quite vocal with penguins who treat him as their own. The newly hatched consider him another parent.<\/p>\n
His mother and father pass away. Sister sent to a psychiatric hospital. Brother disappears into the army.<\/p>\n
Over the years, he becomes an intuitive penguin expert but is not recognised by mainstream penguin authorities. Penguins laid eggs. Birds laid eggs. Others gave birth to young of their kind. Penguins are birds. Penguins have to be kept cold. Secretly, at night in the summer, he swims with them. And stands for extended periods amongst them. This he does inside the penguin house, away from visitors or staff. The birds have grown used to his presence.<\/p>\n
When that superior interstellar race of beings who now control us landed, they contacted Leo. He had been monitored with his penguin family for over 50 years and was more penguin than human.<\/p>\n
Oh. By the way. The interstellar race which contacted the Earth was a group of intergalactic alien travellers, very advanced, with characteristic penguin appendages, such as Leo has adopted. Leo displays penguin postures and wears penguin suits he made himself to make him appear less \u2018human\u2019 and not to frighten any chicks emerging from their eggs. Many people following Leo\u2019s sartorial modifications take to wearing penguin suits, with evident personal adjustments to these garments. There were no rules, actually, as to how and what to wear as long as they resembled a penguin. He can be seen in the penguin enclosure strutting about amongst his \u2018compatriots.\u2019 This generally draws a crowd of the curious, which helps to spread his notoriety. Over the years, certain parts of the scientific community, those more involved with the Darwinian theory of evolution, think that in a matter of one million years, or so, this planet will be occupied by exceedingly intelligent\u2026 giants, looking somewhat like, ehm, Penguins\u2026 King\u2026 Penguins. At least this was the general idea floated\u2026 Until then?\u2026 Well, we will just have to wait and see!<\/p>\n
It was a joke, of course.<\/p>\n
So. Let\u2019s fast-forward and see.<\/p>\n
An open plain. Mountains in the middle distance. A forest edge, chilly wind stirring the white topped trees. Not snow. White leaves. Snow on higher ground. Just another day, one million, 243 thousand years in the future. Small figures are approaching. Look humanoid with penguin features, short stubby legs, fat, round body, two arms, fingers, head, recognisable as a mix of human and penguin? So this is it! Evolution? They, twenty-four of them, all sizes, male and female perhaps, are the last vestiges of their PenMan species, though they do not know it. Waddling along, they approach a dip roughly four hundred meters long on the plateau. At the bottom, twenty-nine meters below, a jumble of smooth rocks, which seem to have been cut and fashioned to stand together. They stop at the lip of the dip in the ground, put their handflips together and \u2018pray.\u2019 To their ancestors.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
by Zygmunt Nowak-Soli\u0144ski Leonard Gimbal lives in a world where everyone talks a lot! His mother constantly squabbling. His father shouts. His half deaf brother Jordan gobbles his words. Sister Kate moans and screeches about her nails and her non-existent boyfriends. The parrot squawks in its cage every time Leonard comes into the front room. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1914,77],"tags":[1915,1123,1762],"class_list":["post-16503","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-egophobia-91","category-english","tag-egophobia-91","tag-english","tag-zygmunt-nowak-solinski"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s6DakB-penguin","jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16503","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16503"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16503\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16504,"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16503\/revisions\/16504"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16503"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16503"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16503"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}