Once upon a time, in a frozen tundra, there lived a little penguin named Penny. Now Penny was not just any penguin; she was a clumsy penguin! She waddled left and right, her little feet tumbling over one another. She tripped over her own flippers and even bumped into fellow penguins more often than they cared to admit. Despite her many tumbles, Penny was jolly: she never let a fall ruin her day. But deep down, she wished her clumsiness would go away.
“You are the silliest little penguin,” giggled Patty, Penny’s best friend, one day as Penny landed belly-first in a pile of snow. “Can’t you even walk straight?”
“It’s not funny!” shouted Penny, a bit hurt. “I just don’t know why I’m so clumsy when all I want is to be graceful. Just once I wish I could just slide from the top of the icy hills to the very bottom without rolling over first.”
From then on, she tried extra-hard-walking, waddling, and tumbling-but no matter how hard she tried or how much she wanted it, Penny would always tumble down.
One lovely winter’s day, while Penny was waddling about, a curious seal poked its head out of the water.
“Why do you little penguins always wear that silly dress?” asked the seal who seemed to Penny to have the most graceful head and neck imaginable.
“It’s not a silly dress,” said Penny, “It’s our feathers, and it’s very warm and keeps the cold water out.”
“Are you a good swimmer?” inquired the seal.
“Not really,” confessed Penny, blushing a little, “I mean to say, I swim all right; it’s just that I don’t swim gracefully. I flip and flop and tumble about and I’m usually the last to finish. I’m quite heavy you see, and have no fins to help me so I’m not quick like your gracefulness.”
“Well how about a race now? We can swim to that big iceberg,” said the seal.
“No, no, I could never swim that far,” puffed Penny.
“But you could walk some of the way. We’ll see who gets there first,” said the seal with a grin.
So Jenny Hill Billy (the seal) and Penny started together, the seal swimming and the penguin walking, and with all her flopping and tumbling Penny was nearly at the iceberg first.
“You’re a good sport!” said the seal. “I like you. But if you want to swim gracefully, you must always go straight to the water-I will show you.” They then practised until Penny was able to swim quickly and without tumbling into the air and at the iceberg.
When blind-man’s buff and other fun, hopeful games were over the little penguins decided to have a race. There were plump Baby Blue and Penny, also Patty and… And Billy Seal who had come only that same morning from a place far away. So they decided that the race should take place from the iceberg to the further hump of the iceberg.
Now, Billy Seal was far heavier and quicker in water than the others, that’s why he could get there first and swim back in the 5 minutes as he did. Then they had fun swimming, dozing, diving from cracks in the ice, and soon after all swimming, custom did so. Again and again they raced and had fun till nearly sunset.
The others still hoped Billy would fail or not win. Also, we find it much more easy to amuse fish and eels than to tumble and tumble out of the tumbly ice, surface fast, espy fishing, comical showing very puzzled eels, etc.