I was a creative child. Most of us were, if we were privileged enough to grow up in an environment that allowed or supported creativity. For some of us, school was that place.
Mannheim Elementary School was a U.S. Department of Defense School on Benjamin Franklin Village Army Base, near Mannheim, Germany. I was in the Talented and Gifted (TAG) program, which afforded me the chance to split away from the rest of my peers into a small group of other TAG students.
TAG class convened in small mobile trailer off the back of the school. The harsh fluorescent lighting was only made bearable because of the deliberate effort of our Frau. She decorated according to the season, and always made sure we had sweet treats, which she baked herself. She kept a small warmer on, slowly heating freshly peeled orange slices and spices to cozy up the space.
You are about to read my second ever book: The Emperor Penguins. My first book was The Me Book, shared in a series of posts from my early Substack archives that I never finished (part one, part two, part three).
The Emperor Penguins was written and illustrated by me, scribed by the Frau, and carefully ironed onto cotton cloth sheets, bound by a red cloth spine. Some of the words were cut off when it was wrapped into the spine, but if you allow your mind to morph back into your nine-year old self, you can easily fill in the gaps.
I read every book on penguins at my little school library. I could list all of the known variants of penguins to you, detailing their differences in size, dietary preferences, and which ones were bold enough to travel the furthest away.
The fact that penguins could not fly deeply resonated with me. It still does. A trip to Antarctica remains on my short list of things I intend to do as an adult, and the prolonged desire to make that voyage has as much to do with penguins as it has to do with my love of adventure and the pursuit of dark, horizon-to-horizon skies full of stars that cannot be seen unless one is in the southern hemisphere.
I am convinced that my love of penguins would’ve persisted beyond May 1993 had it not been for Jurassic Park releasing to theaters that next month. From that point forward, I was obsessed with dinosaurs.
This is a special artifact from my childhood. I hope it makes you smile today 🐧💛
