At a New Year’s party, I got stuck talking to a friend of a friend’s boyfriend. We were having that kind of conversation where both parties cling awkwardly to their drinks, as if they were shields. In those situations, people ask each other meaningless questions, even though they don’t really care about the answer and just to fill the thick, empty silence.
“So, on a scale of 1 to 10, how much of a tree-hugger would you say you are?” he asked me.
“I’m fairly tree-hugging,” I told him. I figured it was true. I do my part to recycle, buy organic and local when I can afford it, and turn off lights when I leave a room. In thinking about my fabric grocery bags and vegetarian habits, I decided I had a little wiggle room to say something ironic.
“But I still do like to kick penguins,” I added and sipped my drink.
The man gasped.
His face turned red under his lumberjack beard.
“Have you ever worked at a zoo?” He asked me with a tight jaw, as if he was holding back spitting bullets. “You wouldnt say that if you’d actually held one. I worked with them, and they are the sweetest, cutest…”
He choked on the end of his sentence, and even turned his face slightly away from me. In his eyes, I was a horrible, horrible aquatic life-torturing monster.
“I’m kidding!” I stammered. “I mean, I just thought that ‘clubbing baby seals’ was over used, so I thought I’d be more creative and kick penguins. I don’t. Seriously, I don’t.”
He hasn’t having it. He held up his protective beer glass shield and turned around to the guys behind him, so he could pretend to be in their conversation.
Let this be a lesson to you all: Never kick the penguins.
