Little Penguin Bits

A Little Baby Dreamer

Peso knew the world was small-minded. Which made it hard being small.

At first, he felt angry, because the world was forcing down all these new rules hat he didn't understand. He felt scared and ashamed, and terribly angry all the time, because his classmates bullied him, his teachers talked about him pointedly behind his back, his mother patronized him and his father hated him, called him a mistake, troubled, and the like.

'Crybaby' had ruled his life.

He was always slower than his peers, falling behind in the growth curve, that being the maturing process. He'd always been the last one to stop using pacifiers in preschool, hugging stuffed animals in grade school and using diapers in daycare. It had all been so hard to give up, and for that, people felt the need to make him suffer. Even his mother, although she did her 'tormenting' in a more affectionate, supportive way. It had driven Peso to the brink of suicide.

And then, he was finally free. Free from the chain of childhood, free from all the adults telling him what and how to be. Or so he thought. Nobody took him seriously. To everyone, he was just some doofus, troubled kid, a Crybaby. And it drove Peso to fury, because he knew it was all in the name of grabbing power.

He'd always felt that people, grownups especially, were selfish, stupid, judgmental, imbecelic, undeserving, power-hungry scaredy cats, always afraid that if they didn't strike first,  they would lose all control, and they wouldn't be able to use children as their vent source. If children were treated with respect, not only would they be kinder, Peso was sure, but they would also have voices. And adults were terrified of the prospect of listening to children, of children having any power. And this, therefore, taught children to be nasty to each other in return and lack of a proper venting source. They would do anything to maintain what little control over the world they had, and that meant the children were nothing but playthings to them, meant to be bent to their will, forced and tortured and humiliated and hurt.

It had taken Peso years just to figure it all.

But now he was finally away from that, safe in the Octopod and regaining his edge, his sanity, from finally being around adults that actually seemed, tried, to be reasonable, decent people. He could watch all those ungrateful indescribable jerks float away and shrink into the distance as the Octopod took off.

He was able to focus on himself for a change, and not how evil the world of grownups was. Able to focus on his childhood, which he was forced to give up LONG before he was ready.

The Octonauts didn't need to know,  of course.

Of course, it was still frustrating being him. He was fat--he wouldn't know otherwise--and he had a funny baby face. People were always teasing him, mistaking him for a little baby penguin. It drove him nuts sometimes, mostly because it reminded him of the life he wanted, of the childhood he desperately starved for.

Of the fear of The Line.

Once you cross that line, you can never return. Peso had seen the lives of adults. He wasn't sure it was completely for him. And he didn't want to risk crossing the line and finding out he'd rather go back, only to be trapped forever.

He remembered school, and his father's abusive demands...shrugging on his uniform, the one his father always forced him to wear, in hopes of knocking out the nonsense, the fabric gripping his arms, binding and crushing his chest, trapping him forever...

A knock on the door startled him from his thoughts and he turned away from the window, where he had been musing. Kwazii smiled tenderly at him. At fifteen, Peso got moody some days. This was one of those days. "Hey, we're all going out to run some errands. Wanna get some fresh are?" They were hoping it would do him some good.