Negative Penguins
I am a huge Linux advocate, and, as such, my favorite animal is a penguin. Someday (if my wife ever lets me) I’m going to get a tattoo of “Tux” (the Linux mascot) somewhere on my body. I also watched a documentary about penguins last night just before going to bed. Looks like the penguins invaded my dreams.
I was standing in an open plain with corn growing in one direction, and wheat in the other direction. The tall plants were far enough away that I still had a good view of my surroundings. Suddenly, the wheat and corn began to move against the blowing wind, so I knew that something was coming through it. After a few moments of expectation, thousands of penguins burst from the fields. These penguins were small enough to walk between the stalks of the corn/wheat, so I’m not sure how they were making the plants move. I kept expecting giant penguins to come out, but they never did.
Back to the penguins… They were not quite knee-high on me, and they waddled like penguins are want to do. This is about where their normalcy ended. They were negative images of what normal penguins look like. They were black where they should be white, and white where they should be black. The yellow parts of their bodies were a bluish shade that shimmered in the sunlight. They also moved really fast. Their walking motion was very normal, but they seemed to whiz across the ground at a high rate of speed.
I normally don’t feel threatened by penguins, but in this case, I knew that they were out to get me. I ran from the penguins, but it was to no avail. They had me surrounded. I managed to jump over several of them, but this just put me in the middle of their ranks. As they closed in on me, they would leap against my body. Their touch burned me, and left behind marks. As I screamed in pain, I ran as hard as I could, but the little waddling flightless birds managed to keep up with me. As each one threw its body against me, they would flash brightly and vanish. I knew that eventually they would run out of members of the group to accost me. I ran and ran. I’m horribly out of shape and can’t run very far without stopping for a break, but this night I ran like the wind and never had to stop.
As I ran, I managed to put some distance between me and the penguins. Eventually, the penguins stopped chasing me, and I had a chance to survey my wounds from the flight. The burns that I had suffered were images of the penguins as they touched me. I was marked — tattooed if you will — with dozens of penguins on my body.
Perhaps my psyche is trying to tell me something about my plans to get a tattoo, but I think I still want one. Now if I can only talk my wife into letting me do it.
