Bi-Polar Bear and Friends
If you asked most people about Polar Bears, or Thalarctos maritimus as scientists or people who still speak Latin would call them, most people would think of shaggy white bears that live in Arctic, hunt for fish, and occasionally appear in ads for Christmas or Coca-Cola. And they’d be right, for the most part.
If you asked people about the Arctic, they probably think of somewhere very cold, full of ice, snow, and very, very white. And they’d probably be right too, but really it’s only cold if you are the sort of person that really feels the cold. Or, indeed, if you are a person and not, say, a polar bear. Most polar bears find the temperature quite nice actually and it is sunny and bright there for most of the year, which is more than you can say for rainy old Ireland.
And if you were the type of person who kept asking questions, and asked people another question about penguins, they would tell you that they come from the other end of the world to polar bears, living and swimming in the Antarctic region and not really flying well, or at all,. Which is correct and a fact and all that, but one shouldn’t always believe things just because they are facts or because someone on television says it true.
Look at Arthur, the Autistic Penguin.
Arthur lived very firmly in the Arctic, having travelled there from the other side some time ago. There was no doubt in his mind that he was in the Arctic as he remembered every stage of his journey over land, on ships, and occasionally riding the back of a whale, much to the annoyance of the whale, but Arthur didn’t really notice that. Further, he knew he was in the Arctic because there were polar bears, and regardless of what everyone else said they knew, Arthur knew that polar bears lived in the Arctic and, to Arthur, going by what he himself and only he knew was a very good guideline for living his life.
Bi-Polar Bear was always conscious that he was different from most of the other polar bears. Sometimes he would be very happy and tell jokes and laugh as he fished in the sea that people think is very cold, but he found to be rather refreshing. In fact, at these times, Bi-Polar Bear was the centre of attention, the life of the party and everyone liked being with him and he liked being with everyone else. But sometimes Bi-Polar Bear though very seriously about life and about the world in a different way than most polar bears, or people for that matter, tend to think. He didn’t ponder, or wonder. He thought in a way which the other bears thought looked very sad. Bi-Polar Bear didn’t really feel sad. In fact, when he thought this way he didn’t really feel much of anything. He certainly didn’t feel like doing anything. He just wanted to be left alone to sit and let thoughts go through his head. Most polar bears didn’t really understand how Bi-Polar Bear could be happy, telling jokes, laughing and the centre of attention one day, and then appear to be very sad and lost in his thoughts the next day. But that’s just the way he was.
Arthur met Bi-Polar Bear one day when Arthur was going to spot where he always sat an three o’clock, for precisely ten minutes, before always swimming in the little pond surrounded by frozen ice for another ten minutes, and then going fishing down the river, about one hundred and twenty-seven paces from the pond in a northerly direction. Well, he arrived there one day to find this big polar bear sitting in the spot where he always sat. Arthur stood there, staring at the polar bear’s back, not really knowing what he could do, but getting quite agitated, as his wing watch (one might think he should have a wrist-watch, but penguins don’t have any wrists, you see) told him that it was thirty-five seconds to three. Arthur frowned at the polar bear, cocked his head this way and that, and shuffled from one webbed foot to the other, sighing in an exasperated manner and occasionally making a sound like the first syllable of a cow’s “moo”. He really didn’t know what to do. It didn’t occur to him to speak to the polar bear because Arthur didn’t really normally speak to anyone. It’s not that he didn’t really want to, it’s just that it wasn’t something he did. It really was just the way he was.
Arthur was getting quite peeved at this stage. His watch said that it was now only fifteen seconds to the time when he always sat where the polar bear was now sitting, which he quite clearly would not be able to do, as the polar bear was entirely occupying his spot (polar bears being somewhat larger than penguins). His brow was as furrowed as one might expect a penguin’s brow can get, as he really was quite annoyed. The polar bear was in his spot. Arthur breathed quite loudly, stamped hit foot in the snow – it made almost no noise at all as the snow was soft but it made him feel a bit better – and said in an angry voice (though the voice was only in his head and he didn’t actually say anything) “MOVE!”
Very slowly, Bi-Polar Bear turned his head, his eyes drooping and looking like he was staring into the distance. He saw this penguin there, who appeared to be seething with rage – so angry that he was almost trembling. Bi-Polar Bear was confused as to why a penguin would be here in the Arctic, standing beside him, looking annoyed, have just thought (but to his mind, thought very loudly) “MOVE!” at him. Not one bit of it made sense. And because Bi-Polar Bear was in one his seemingly sad, thinking moods, he didn’t really feel like moving, or doing anything much. His voice sounded deep, slow and heavy and, although he wasn’t particularly angry at the penguin, his voice sounded a bit annoyed, as if he was being unnecessarily disturbed. He looked down at the penguin and said, “What?”
Hearing the polar bear saying “What?” further infuriated Arthur, who was getting more and more annoyed as the seconds moved closer to three. He really couldn’t understand why the bear would not move when the bear was sitting in his spot. I mean, he told the bear to move and they bear should know why he had to move. Arthur didn’t really want to get angry, but the bear was upsetting his routine (routines were very important to Arthur) and time was running out. So, tapping his foot impatiently and swinging his wing across to point as his watch to tap that impatiently too just for good measure, he thought, even louder, “That’s my spot! I need to sit there. That is my spot for sitting.”
It was clear to Bi-Polar bear that this penguin wanted to sit where he was sitting. He wondered why the penguin simply didn’t just ask! Bi-Polar turned his head slowly to the left and slowly to the right, looking at the white expanse of land about him where one could fit a million sitting penguins if they wanted to sit there, and looked back at the penguin. A lot of possible replies entered his head, such as “you can sit over there” or “it’s a free country” or “why are you here?” or quite simply “go away”. But he didn’t say any of those. He just shrugged his great big shoulders, sighed and turned his gaze back to the point in the distance that he wasn’t really looking at and thought in that seemingly sad way.
Well this was all too much for Arthur. At precisely three, very agitated, he sat beside the polar bear, the way people sit when they are cramming into a bus seat, all pressed against one another. And Arthur pushed. Now it didn’t really occur to him that there was no physically possible way for the small penguin to move this huge hulking thoughtful bear, but push Arthur did, for it was three and although he was sitting down very close to his spot, he wasn’t actually sitting exactly in his spot. So he pushed and fumed, nudging the bear with his shoulder, his bum and sometimes pushing with his wing.
Bi-Polar Bear, looked down at this little penguin, pushing and puffing with all his might, trying to move him across, Bi-Polar Bear assumed, so he could sit where he wanted to sit. Despite the fact that Bi-Polar bear was in deep thought and seemed sad, he look at Arthur and felt a small tickly surge of joy come from his tummy, work his way up to his lips causing them to spread in a smile and then laughed out loud. Arthur was quite taken aback, stopped pushing and stared at the laughing polar bear. Bi-Polar Bear was now laughing his heart out, shaking his shoulders in mirth, and actually rolled over, waving his great big paws in the air, his laughter echoing across the icy plains. As soon as he rolled over, of course, Arthur moved in, quick as a shot, and took the place in which he always sat. He then relaxed and sighed in deep contentment.
Bi-Polar Bear stopped laughing after and took a moment to catch his breath. He looked up and saw that Arthur had moved over and was relaxed and happy and not annoyed at all any more. Bi-Polar Bear thought what a curios little penguin this penguin was, as he sat, happy as anything, staring about him, at the sky above him, the crystal clear water below and the ice about him. Clambering back from his rather ungraceful position on his back, Bi-Polar Bear lumbered forward and sat beside Arthur, not pushing against him, but at a polite distance apart.
Bi-Polar Bear sighed, the laughter leaving him, and looked straight ahead at nothing in particular.
Arthur sighed, happy and content, his watch saying that it was two minutes passed three and looked about him.
They stayed that way for exactly eight minutes before Arthur took his swim. Staying just the way they were.
**************
Over the next few days, Bi-Polar Bear thought often of that little penguin on that specific spot on the ice plains. He thought about how peculiar the little penguin was but it also made Bi-Polar Bear smile whenever he thought of him. You see, whenever Bi-Polar Bear went fishing with the other polar bears, or lay around rolling in that cute way polar bears do, or did any other polar bear related activities, he felt, well, that he quite simply didn’t belong. And, as is always the way when somebody appears to be a little different, the other polar bears didn’t make it any easier for him. They didn’t call him names or push him about – polar bears, contrary to popular belief, are far to civilised to allow bullying of that sort to happen. People could take a lesson or two from the Book of Polar Bears, where such a book to exist (polar bears often find it difficult to write with such big paws, you see). The other polar bears just knew he was different. Worse still for Bi-Polar Bear – they let him know that they knew.
Some of them said “Oh, what a sad, thoughtful bear he is”. Other said, “he should concentrate on fishing and none of this thinking nonsense”. Still others said, “I don’t know what he has to be sad about all the time – he has everything he could ever want”.
But it wasn’t any of that. It wasn’t that he thought too much. It wasn’t that he was unhappy with his lot. He sighed it that weary resigned way whenever the other bears said those kind of things – which was quite frequent. And although he knew that they had the best of intentions, they just didn’t get it. It was quite simply that sometimes he wanted fun and was happy and other times he just simply wanted to go away from them all, from everything really, and just… well… just try to hide from the world for a little bit. He thought that this was quite a reasonable thing to do. The way the world was these days one needs to hide from it from time to time. He also though that if most of the other bears were honest, they would probably admit to feeling like that too every so often.
But for Bi-Polar Bear, it was more than a feeling. It was just the way he was.
After a while, most of the others gave up on him. They didn’t know what to do and nothing they did seemed to work. To compound their frustrations, and his own, Bi-Polar Bear didn’t want them to do anything in the first place! So they simply let him be when he was, as they called it, “in one of his moods”. “Probably better for all concerned”, they thought.
Somehow, though, it didn’t make Bi-Polar Bear feel any better. I mean, he didn’t want them there, but he didn’t want them not there at the same time. “Oh”, he thought feeling that weary, empty feeling again, “I don’t know what I want. I just want … well… nothing”.
He was alone, now, on the icecaps, wandering aimlessly, not really thinking about anything other then how great it would be if he could stop thinking once in a while. His eyes grew droopy and his big paws became so heavy that his shoulders sagged weightily in an effort to keep his arms attached to his body. He sighed so deeply that he almost inhaled an amount of snow and then exhaled it so fast that it shot into a cave in the ice a few metres from where he was standing. His gaze followed the path of the snow for a few minutes. He was about to turn away when he heard a rather agitated voice coming from the cave where the snow he had exhaled had visited in the preceding moment.
“I say! I say! Oh dear. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. I knew this would happen. Simply knew. I only turned around thirteen times last night. Oh dear”. The voice belonged to a snow fox who followed the sounds out of the cave and onto the ice. Bi-Polar Bear raised an eyebrow – it was about all the action he could muster at this moment. In any case, he did that a lot and it seemed an appropriate thing to do. The snow fox stopped upon seeing Bi-Polar Bear. That is to say, she stopped moving forward. However, her four legs continued to shuffle apparently independent of her body in four different directions as if she could not make up her mind which way to go or whether she wanted to go anywhere in the first place. Her tail also twitched a lot, giving the impression that there was an after-thought in her body which suggested that she should also trying going up as well as the directions the rest of her body seemed to want to go. The whole effect seemed to Bi-Polar Bear as if she was trembling.
The Snow Fox took another look at Bi-Polar Bear, cocked her head to one side and then approached him slowly, her eyes almost pleading. The effort of her body to move forward while seemingly wanting to go in every other direction made the Snow Fox movement appear like those of a windy-up toy that waddles as it walks. She even wore a furrow into the ice. Looking up at the Bi-Polar Bear, quite nervous and even more agitated at Bi-Polar Bear didn’t see what was patently obvious to her. “Don’t you see? Can’t you see? Don’t you see that the icecaps are melting! There’s snow on my nose. It landed there from the melting icecaps. Oh dear, oh dear”.
She spoke very quickly, possibly, Bi-Polar Bear idly thought, to keep up tempo with the rest of her vibrating body. He inhaled and was about to answer her when she erupted verbally like a volcano, the words almost tripping over themselves in an effort to jump off her quaking jaw, “You see, I only turned around thirteen times last night, not fifteen, it should always be fifteen. But I was so tired, you see – I had been walking all day, so very tired. Tired like a fox one might say. Hee hee. Ha ha. Oh dear, not a laughing matter. I really should not laugh. I only turned around thirteen times and now the ice is melting. We’ll all be drowned, or at best, very cold and very wet. It’s all my fault you. They are melting, you see. Don’t you see? You do see, don’t you? There’s snow on my snout. Warm snow. Melted ice, you see. Don’t you see? You do see, don’t you? Warm snow from the melted ice.”
At this point, Amelia the Obsessive Compulsive Disorder Snow Fox (for that was her name, at the least the Amelia bit was and the other bit was hardly ever used) started running in circles that not only made Bi-Polar Bear dizzy, but also began to wear an alarming circle in the ice like you will have seen in those cartoons where one character used a saw to cut the ice from under another. It also occurred to Bi-Polar bear that he really ought to exhale, as he hadn’t yet, and that he should probably really say something, especially now as the Snow Fox was repeating in very fast and increasingly high tones, “fifteen not thirteen. fifteen not thirteen”.
Bi-Polar Bear suddenly felt guilty for the deep sigh that sent the snow into the cave onto Snow Fox’s snout – not that it amounted to a snowball, really, unless we are talking about a very small snowball – like a snow ping-pong ball.
“Um... excuse me”, said Bi-Polar Bear. He was always polite, but it didn’t seem to have any effect on the swiftly rotating mutter Snow Fox. “I’m sorry”, he continued on his polite vein, “but you see, I think that was me who … erm … blew the snow in there. The icecaps are not melting at all”. The Snow Fox paused, though with all her vibrating and twitching it took Bi-Polar Bear a few moments to realise this. She eyed Bi-Polar Bear with something akin to suspicion and said, “snow? Blew? Not melting?” It appear to Bi-Polar Bear that there was a sentence somewhere there which was not quite making itself apparent. Amelia the OCD Snow Fox sighed, seemed to slow down and almost come to a standstill. In short, she appeared to calm down and regain composure.
“Yes”, she said, “Well. All very well for you then. Blowing snow anywhere you wish. Yes. Well. Hello then. How are you? I am Amelia the Snow Fox”. Bi-Polar Bear was confused. “Hi. Em… are you ok, now?” “I am quite fine”, responded Amelia the Snow Fox, sounding almost indignant that someone, or some Bear in this case, would suggest that she would appear to be anything other than fine. “Good”, Bi-Polar Bear said with some uncertainty, “I’m Bi-Polar Bear”. “Yes, yes”, replied Amelia the Snow Fox, as if some question had been asked, “well off with you then, I have to nap you know, I must rest, yes. Turn around fifteen times, yes, fifteen times. Good day, good day”.
And with that Amelia the OCD Snow Fox returned to her cave, her snout now snow free. Bi-Polar Bear heard faint counting from one to fifteen as he stood there, not so much stunned as bemused. Actually, he felt like he was just catching up with the conversation – it had all seemed to move so fast. He thought that Amelia the Snow Fox was rather odd, thinking that the amount of times she turned around before sleeping led to the melting of the icecaps or otherwise. He thought it was all a bit silly, really. Then again, he was sure that people often thought his behaviour was odd and sometimes silly. Who was he to judge what was silly. The thought crossed his mind that there can really be no one to judge what is normal and what is, well, not normal, because if you judge what is not normal then you have to be unusually not normal. Or overly normal. He wasn’t sure which. And his head hurt the more he thought about it, but it only hurt in part of his brain as Bi-Polar Bear could use a few different parts of his brain for different thoughts.
Most of his brain was, as we said, catching up with what had just happened with himself and Amelia the OCD Snow Fox. He wanted to tell someone. The only person he could think of telling – in fact, the only person he really wanted to tell – was that small little penguin friend of his. Bi-Polar Bear looked at the sun and thought it looked almost like three o’clock. Unlike Arthur, he didn’t have a wing watch, but he thought he was quite good at telling time by where the sun was in the sky. And as it almost always sunny in the North Pole, this was quite a feat, but then again so is having somewhere so cold that it is made of ice even though the sun is always shining.
Bi-Polar Bear often had such complicated thoughts with lots of questions and very few answers.
In any case, he judged it to be almost three o’clock or thereabouts, which meant he knew exactly where his new penguin friend would more than likely probably be.
**************
Bi-Polar found Arthur in the spot where Arthur sat at three o’clock. Although Bi-Polar bear didn’t know for sure that Arthur would be there, he figured from the fuss Arthur had made about sitting in that specific spot that Arthur was a creature of habit. Bi-Polar Bear didn’t even know that Arthur’s name was Arthur, but we can’t very well go on calling him “that Penguin” as it may seem rude.
Now, one might think that any piece of ice looks like any other, and I would probably agree, but we are not polar bears (at least, I am not one), so Bi-Polar Bear had his bearings (no pun intended) and skirted around the big piece of ice that sticks up and went by the ice that looks slightly different from that bit in this light and finally arrived at the hard ice with soft snow next to the softer ice with hard snow and there, indeed, was Arthur, in the spot in which he sat at precisely three o’clock, staring contentedly into space.
The first thing Bi-Polar Bear noticed about Arthur was that he wasn’t all black and white. In fact, today, he was also red and yellow. For Arthur was sporting a rather jolly red and yellow scarf and a red and yellow woollen bobbly hat. Bi-Polar Bear blinked, more so in the absence of anything else to do. He sniffed the air as it is a well known fact that polar bears can tell the temperature through their nose. Bi-Polar Bear’s nose felt colder that it was yesterday which meant it was, obviously, a colder day today.
Now, for the likes of you and me, the difference between cold and colder in the Arctic is a bit like saying different pools of water are wetter than each other. What I mean is that is it so cold in the Arctic, we would be more likely to worry about bits freezing off rather than the fact that today it was minus 35 as opposed to minus 30. But Bi-Polar Bear and Arthur could recognise these things. It made perfect sense to Arthur to wear a hat and scarf as it was colder today, even though he was sitting on cold ice and was about to swim in ice cold water. Arthur simply didn’t think this way – he didn’t connect the dots of this process, as it were. It was colder, ergo hat and scarf. His mind didn’t think further on. Some people would say this can be a good thing.
Bi-Polar Bear grinned widely when he saw the be-hatted and be-scarfed Arthur, and a polar bear can grin quite widely indeed. “What a funny little penguin he is”, thought Bi-Polar Bear as he lumbered across the ice towards his friend. Bi-Polar Bear was in a very good mood after his encounter with Amelia – one of those life-of-the-party moods he sometimes got when he wasn’t thinking lots and seemingly sad. Though most of the other polar bears liked this mood, he sometimes went a bit over the top and giggled incessantly or kept on talking after the conversation had, for most of the others, long since finished. And he hardly ever listened when he was this happy – as if the party in his head meant that you really had to shout over the music to be heard, and even then one only heard every second syllable.
So Bi-Polar Bear lumbered happily over to Arthur’s spot and sat down beside him at a respectful distance. Arthur did not move, but stayed as he was, staring contently at a lot of ice and snow. Bi-Polar Bear grinned, looked at Arthur, looked at the vast whiteness, grinned again, looked at Arthur again and inhaled deeply.
“Well”, he said, “I had a strange afternoon”. He paused and stared down at Arthur to see if he was paying attention. Arthur did appear to be paying attention to anything but to the ice and not to Bi-Polar Bear. The fact is that while he heard Bi-Polar Bear, he didn’t really hear him. The words were said, but they went into Arthur’s ears and hung around there, never really bothering the brain with what they meant or the fact that there was a conversation was going on. This always happened Arthur. He wasn’t rude, he just didn’t understand conversations. In fact, Arthur didn’t understand rude or any emotions that involved how one could make other people feel. He knew if someone told him a new fact, such as that red square is a brick used for building. But conversations that did not involve things such as solid objects with a specific purpose kind of drifted away from him – Arthur just didn’t get conversations.
Bi-Polar Bear didn’t seem too upset that Arthur wasn’t paying particular attention. Arthur hadn’t left and, therefore, as far as Bi-Polar Bear was concerned, he had to be listening. Bi-Polar Bear didn’t think like Arthur and didn’t know that the words were only in Arthur’s ear and not connecting to his brain. Bi-Polar Bear was also too excited about his story and sometimes, when he was in one of his over-happy moods, he didn’t really think much of people’s reaction as what he wanted to do or say was happening so fast that each activity and word was falling over itself. Bi-Polar Bear was either too excited to think or too thoughtful to act – it was a strange combination, but it was just the way he was.
“I sneezed and met a fox”, Bi-Polar Bear continued, speaking quite fast and a little louder then was necessary, “I mean, the snow moved when I sneezed and fell on the fox, the snow fell, not me. It went into her cave and fell on her nose and she thought the icecaps were melting and it was all her fault – the icecaps, not the sneeze – and it took me ages to calm her down and tell her that the icecaps melting were not her fault because she turned around before sleeping, or didn’t turn around, I can’t remember which, or in fact nor her fault at all, well, most likely not in any case”.
Now, to your average person, bear or penguin, Bi-Polar Bear sounded like his words were tripping each other up in a hasty effort to flee his mouth before being given a packed lunch and directions from his brain. To Arthur, who didn’t do conversations, Bi-Polar Bear could have been blowing a tuba the wrong way round and made as much sense as he just did. Not that Arthur was really listening, but the backward tuba noise was interfering a bit with his silence and staring. He checked his wing watch, as irritably as someone can really check a watch, which really was an impressive achievement. His watch told him that there was eight minutes left of his sit, whereupon he had to take his swim. Arthur had put a lot of thought into this swim and mentally planned to place his scarf folded three times over about 20cm from the pool, which he had calculated was optimum non-splash distance. He was then going to place his wing watch into his hat and fold that three times (three was a good number to Arthur) and place it dead centre on the folded scarf. He had practiced last night to make sure that it could sit on the folded scarf dead centre. Arthur spent a lot of time planning these things and got very annoyed when the plan didn’t work out exactly as he had, well, planned.
“Amelia”, continued Bi-Polar Bear seemingly without inhaling and oblivious to the fact that Arthur had clearly checked his wing watch in an irritable fashion, “that was her name. Nice fox, a bit odd, but nice. I suppose we are all odd, really. I mean, I’m not so odd, just happier than most people. I wish people could be happy like me; it would all be so much easier. Nice fox, Amelia – you should meet her. Actually, I wouldn’t be able to introduce you as I don’t know your name”. Bi-Polar Bear always forgot his more thoughtful, seemingly sad disposition that really didn’t make him feel like anything when he was in one of his happy moods. He craned his neck towards Arthur, looking a little goofy with his grinning eyes and widespread mouth, waiting for Arthur to give his name, as he had inferred in the last sentence.
As much as Arthur didn’t get conversations, inferring something was to him was like posing a letter with an address as “somewhere in Ireland” – unless you said exactly where it was to go to, the letter never arrived. Ask Arthur a direct question about a specific fact and you might get an answer. Dropping a hint was as useful as adding a cup of warm water to a volcano to cool it down.
Bi-Polar blinked as his mind bounced with more things to say. He wanted to know Arthur’s name first, though, so he could include him in the very much one-sided conversation. That Bi-Polar Bear was talking more at Arthur that with him didn’t seem to bother Bi-Polar Bear and didn’t seem to preclude the possibility that by knowing his name, talking at him would somehow include Arthur in the conversation. Sometimes Bi-Polar Bear didn’t get conversations in a very different way that Arthur didn’t get conversations. He waited a few seconds, which is a long time when Bi-Polar Bear was in one of his excited moods, and said “What is your name?”
It’s a good job Bi-Polar Bear was sitting down, because if he wasn’t, he would have had to. Arthur actually spoke. “Arthur”, he said. Bi-Polar Bear didn’t really know why he was so surprised that Arthur spoke – I mean, he had asked him a question, after all, and usually questions were given an answer. He just somehow didn’t expect Arthur to reply. But reply Arthur did and now Bi-Polar Bear knew his friend’s name.
“Well, Arthur”, Bi-Polar Bear said grinning even broader so it looked like his head had a hinge, “how do you do?”.
This question was too much for Arthur. He had been comfortable with the direct question of “what is your name?” as the only answer could have possibly been “Arthur” and Arthur liked when there was only one answer to a question. If there was more than one answer to a question, then clearly the question was phrased wrong. Such a question like “how do you do?” was, to Arthur, ridiculous. How does he do what? You can’t just ask someone how they do and not specify what activity you are asking how they do – it’s like meeting someone for the first time and quite simply asking them “why?” It made no sense. To Arthur, anyway.
When things didn’t make any sense to Arthur, and when people asked him clearly ridiculous questions, Arthur got annoyed. Not at anyone in particular, just generally annoyed. Arthur accelerated Bi-Polar Bear’s surprise to great surprise when he huffed and puffed, looked this way and that, stood up, sat down, rocked back and forward a bit, stood up again and made a sound like an “n” and an “m” having a fight in the middle of a word.
Bi-Polar Bear’s brow furrowed, which, on a bear as big as Bi-Polar Bear looked like two tidal waves over his eyes crashing towards his nose but never actually hitting it. Arthur seemed to be as out of sorts as the first time they met when Bi-Polar Bear was sitting in the spot where Arthur sat at three o’clock.
“Um, sorry”, said Bi-Polar Bear, the happy mood beginning to trickle away from him like cold stream water through fingers. This did not appear to alter Arthur’s mood in any way. “Sorry” was one of those things that related to other people or that his parents used to make him say to other penguins before he left, though Arthur never really understood why. Bi-Polar Bear remained silent and Arthur slowly calmed down.
At seven minutes and thirty seconds passed three, Arthur stood and waddled with purpose to the swimming hole. Bi-Polar Bear watched his little friend with thoughtful and heavy eyes and the trickle of happiness began to gain momentum away from him and become a flow. Arthur stopped 20 centimetres from the swimming hole, took off his scarf and folded it three times evenly. He then took off his hat and placed on the scarf and hurriedly took his wing watch off and the hat was dangerously not centred on the scarf and could not be centred until it was folded. This has caused Arthur some distress the previous night, but he had contented himself with the fact that this was the way it would be for only a moment before the hat was folded around the watch and centred. With a final look at the wing watch before the hat covered it, Arthur nodded contentedly and dived into the icy water.
“Hm”, though Bi-Polar Bear whose mood had changed so quickly that he had given up thinking words and now only thought in sounds. Watching the swimming penguin, Bi-Polar Bear realised that Arthur got annoyed if his routine was upset. He also realised that Arthur didn’t talk much and only seemed to answer questions. Finally, he guessed that Arthur liked red and yellow. It was then that Bi-Polar Bear decided to become part of Arthur’s routine and get to know this little penguin as best he could. Even though Bi-Polar Bear was now in one of his seemingly sad and thoughtful places, he still thought that a friendship with Arthur could be a good thing which just goes to show how important friendships can be. They can sometimes shine a torch into dark corners and find you when you are hiding. After all, nobody wants to win a game of hide-and-seek because then you would be locked in a closet smelling of mothballs and old for hours.
Bi-Polar Bear took one last look at the swimming Arthur, nodded slowly as if confirming something, and slowly plodded away.
**************
Over the next few weeks and, indeed, months, Bi-Polar Bear found himself increasingly arriving at Arthur’s spot for sitting at precisely 3pm until eventually he was there every day. Sometimes he talked to Arthur, to Arthur never really talked back to him. But Bi-Polar Bear was happy to ramble on when he was in one of his excited moods and equally happy to remain silent when he was in one of his sad, thoughtful moods, so Arthur was, in fact, almost a perfect companion. He didn’t expect Bi-Polar Bear to be any other way than the way he was. He didn’t expect Bi-Polar Bear to talk when he didn’t feel like it and didn’t seem to mind when Bi-Polar Bear rambled on and on at very high speeds about nothing in particular and everything under the sun all at once.
From Arthur’s point of view, he got used to the presence of Bi-Polar Bear and it became part of his routine, which was very important to Arthur indeed. He even accepted the fact that when Bi-Polar Bear had his Red and Yellow days (which, to Arthur, were good days) he talked and on other days he was silent. As long as he didn’t ask Arthur any ridiculous questions, such as “are you alright?” which is clearly nonsense (how can one be all right, when one clearly has a left), then Arthur didn’t mind him being there. For Arthur, who didn’t do friendships in the same way he didn’t do conversations, this was a big step. And Bi-Polar Bear, for his part, learned not to ask any small talk questions and, in fact, began to think that it was silly asking people “how do you do?” and how are things?” as when one asked such questions, one really never wanted an answer. Moreover, when another person did answer, they always said “fine” or “good” and nobody, in Bi-Polar Bear’s experience, could be fine or good all the time and it was the kind of answer that had nothing behind it anyway, so they may as well have said “wall” or “sixpence”. Bi-Polar Bear thought that this was the reason that it was called small talk and then wondered why there wasn’t a big talk. Then he thought that there could be big conversations. Then he sighed and thought some more, as he often did.
One day, Bi-Polar Bear was in a very deep seemingly sad and thoughtful mood and had been that way for a few days. Sometimes when Bi-Polar Bear felt this way, he didn’t like to leave his bed. Part of him wanted to, but when he moved he felt like he was in a swamp and the muck was sucking at his legs with each step he made. Walking was a lot of effort at this time and Bi-Polar Bear felt that his get up and go had got up and gone. It was at time like this that Bi-Polar Bear just closed his door and pretended the world wasn’t there and all the other polar bears ignored him.
However, the presence of Bi-Polar Bear had, as we said, become part of Arthur’s routine and Arthur got very, very upset when his routine did go as planned. It was the point of routines to go s planned and what was the point in having a routine if things didn’t go in a, well, routine manner! It was this day when Bi-Polar Bear was feeling all heavy footed that he didn’t show up precisely at 3pm on the sport where Arthur sits before swimming in the little pond surrounded by frozen ice for another ten minutes, and then going fishing down the river, about one hundred and twenty-seven paces from the pond in a northerly direction. Arthur looked left and right and up and down and even under the ice when he could see through it. It never occurred to Arthur that Bi-Polar Bear was unlikely to be under the ice and even less likely to be flying above Arthur’s head, but to Arthur looking up was part of looking for someone or something. And so he looked up again. In fact, he kept looking left and right and up and down and under, his heading moving faster and faster as he got more and more agitated until eventually he looked like his beak was conducting several very fast orchestras at once.
Eventually, Arthur got dizzy and sat down on his spot. “This won’t do”, he thought, “the white thing that makes noise isn’t here and should be here as he is always here and therefore he should be here but he quite clearly is not here”. Arthur nodded fiercely as if confirming this statement to himself. He called Bi-Polar Bear the “white thing” as it never occurred to Arthur to as Bi-Polar Bear his name in the same way that it never, in fact, occurred to Arthur to ask Bi-Polar Bear anything. He stayed sitting and began to rock back and forward a little bit as if the agitation in his head had somehow spilled over into his body so every part of him had to move or the agitation in his head would cause his head to pop off. And Arthur needed his head.
Arthur stood up and paced to and fro being very annoyed indeed. He paced to his swimming pool and back again and back and forth. After a moment, he noticed that a thin layer of ice had formed over the swimming pool, which shouldn’t happen as it wasn’t in his routine. For one thing on his routine not to be there was bad enough, but for another thing to go wrong was too much for Arthur. With surprising speed and strength – not attributes penguins are well known for – he charged at the nearest hunk of ice and started hitting it. The ice, being ice, did not hit back and so, after a few moments wearing himself out, Arthur stopped. And made a decision. And with his mind made up, his feet were ordered to walk and walked in the direction from which Bi-Polar Bear always came a few moments before three o’clock.
In the distance, Amelia the OCD Snow Fox, watched the entire episode with her head cocked to the left in a curious way, which was appropriate as she was quite curious. She wasn’t spying, as she knew that was a wrong thing to do, but Bi-Polar Bear had been nice to her and calmed her down and didn’t seem to think that she was too insane and so sometimes she liked to come to this spot and watch Bi-Polar Bear and the penguin sit together. Somehow, it made her feel calmer. She often thought that she should do up to them and say hello, but that ice and an awful lot of soft snow near it, and Amelia knew that if you walked on soft snow you would sent it into the air were it turned to rain and that made the ice caps melt even quicker that if she forgot to turn around fifteen times and she was in no position to take such a risk.
When she saw the penguin stomp off in the direction of where Bi-Polar Bear lived (Amelia tended to know a lot about people and places here – she learned about it just in case she need to evacuate the Arctic if the ice caps melted), she was a little worried. She thought that she better follow Bi-Polar Bear’s little friend in case the penguin stepped on a crack in his search for what Amelia thought was a rather friendly polar bear indeed. So follow she did.
**************
Bi-Polar Bear was sitting on an outcrop of ice watching the other polar bears fish and laugh and have fun and he sighed. He didn’t want to join them. He didn’t want to do anything. It was like somebody had reached inside him and turned off his fun button. He scanned the horizon slowly, bored but without any energy to do anything about it. He didn’t really care either – whoever turned off his fun button also pulled the plug on his emotion engine.
As he looked to and fro, he spotted something which if he had more energy would have made him surprised, but in his current disposition caused him to exert himself to the extent of raising an eyebrow. Across the ice plains, looking very small indeed from Bi-Polar Bear’s vantage point, but moving forward with the unstoppable intent of a non-stop train, was Arthur the Autistic Penguin. The other eyebrow was raised when Bi-Polar bear spotted Amelia, the OCD Snow Fox, picking her way delicately behind Arthur, as if she were walking on eggshells in between large pointy spikes. Bi-Polar Bear opened his mouth as if to say something, but then closed in and placed his nose on his folded paws and sighed loudly as if he was wondering what to do. In fact, he was busy thinking of things not to do, that is, trying to pretend that Arthur wasn’t here to see him or was just walking or that the whole thing out there didn’t not include, require or demand Bi-Polar Bear’s participation or attention.
Of course, the logic part of his brain said that he was pretty sure Arthur knew no one else and it was close to the time where Arthur sits and swims. Further, he had never seen Amelia here before, so he was pretty certain that she had come to see him. But when Bi-Polar Bear was in one of his thoughtful and seemingly sad moods with his emotion button turned off, he was very good at staring at the logic part of his brain until it felt uncomfortable and decided that it really had to be somewhere else to do some hiding.
So, Bi-Polar Bear waited. Well, he didn’t so much wait as not move. And Arthur moved closer, kicking up loose snow (which made Amelia even more nervous), and muttering in a complex mix of grunts, grumbles and squeaks which sounded like several large rats having a conversation with some smaller mice. When Arthur was closer, he saw Bi-Polar Bear lying on the frozen rock above staring at the space around Arthur and sometimes glancing at the space that contained Arthur. Arthur then stopped – after all, he had come to find Bi-Polar Bear and had just found Bi-Polar Bear. He never thought beyond that other than the fact that Bi-Polar Bear was not where Bi-Polar Bear should have been at three o clock and he had come to find him so that he would be where he was supposed to be and had now found him. The fact that Arthur may have needed to tell Bi-Polar Bear any of this, or may have needed to talk to Bi-Polar Bear never occurred to Arthur. His mind went as far as having to find him as he was not where he should have been and then it would be alright.
Except it wasn’t alright. Bi-Polar Bear being found did not appear to rectifying the situation which was getting even worse as it went passed Arthur’s sitting time and into his swimming time. Bi-Polar Bear stayed firmly where he was, resting on his paws. The day so far had been difficult for Arthur as things had not proceeded as he had plans for things to proceed. He had assumed that finding Bi-Polar Bear would solve this, but it had not done so. This was the final straw. Arthur let out a loud cry, louder than a penguin so small should really be able to let, and started thrashing about the ground apparently trying to beat up the ice before settling into a large sob rocking back and forward faster than a rubber seesaw.
Bi-Polar Bear felt an uncomfortable feeling in his tummy as Arthur’s quite pained cry penetrated even his dark mood. Amelia was quite startled and appeared to be trying to run towards Arthur and Bi-Polar Bear at the same time while trying to avoid the soft snow and cracked ice less the ice-caps melt giving the perception that she might at once explode into a hundred tiny Amelias and run off in a hundred different directions. Even the other polar bears stopped and looked around for a moment, before earnestly deciding that this was none of their business and there was fishing which was all of a sudden very urgent indeed.
Bi-Polar Bear thought very fast as Arthur rocked back and forth. Arthur was his friend. Not the way that the other polar bears seemed like friends when Bi-Polar Bear was in one his life of the party moods as that type of friendship only lasted as long as Bi-Polar Bear’s apparent good mood. Arthur was there when he was feeling sad or happy or not feeling anything at all. And when Bi-Polar Bear should have been there for his little friend, he wasn’t. All this happened in a moment, but suddenly Bi-Polar Bear’s emotion switch was turned on and he felt very bad indeed, which, oddly, was almost better than not feeling anything at all. He felt bad for Arthur who was clearly upset that he didn’t turn up on time to sit with him. He felt bad for Amelia whose apparent desire to split into many different directions was causing such strong vibrations as it almost appeared that there were two of her. He felt bad for the other polar bears who were clearly ignoring the situation with the intensity that only those who are so afraid of facing their own sadness that when they saw someone else’s so clearly, they pretended that it wasn’t there at all. And he felt bad for himself that he may have hurt the only friend he had.
When somebody turned Bi-Polar Bear’s emotion switch on this suddenly, all the emotions which hadn’t been happening suddenly hit him like a heavy wet towel and he could feel quite a lot in a very short period of time. Then, after this moment of intense thought and emotion, Bi-Polar Bear acted.
He ran towards Arthur with the urgency one feels when someone they care about is in danger. Amelia stopped vibrating as the focus moved towards one direction – that of Arthur – and all of her body moved in a surprisingly fast coordinated way towards the rocking penguin, suddenly not bothered about the cloud of soft snow that she left in her wake over the large cracks underneath the surface of the ice. Bi-Polar Bear and Amelia reached Arthur almost at the same time and stopped in a flurry of snow and animal. Arthur looked at Bi-Polar Bear, then at Amelia, then back at the ground and rocked some more.
Bi-Polar Bear glanced at Arthur’s wing watch, saw that there was at least seven minutes swimming time left, and quickly calculated that he could be there in three minutes at full speed. When Bi-Polar Bear was in action mode, he could do things like quick calculations. He picked up Arthur, still rocking but now somewhat surprised, and held him on top of his large shoulder. Bi-Polar Bear then looked at Amelia who appeared to just be realising that she had run over a lot of soft snow and cracked ice and was beginning to think the ice caps were melting due to the flurry of snow and was just about to start shaking before she found that she had nothing to shake on as Bi-Polar Bear had whisked her onto his other shoulder and was racing as fast as a polar bear can race towards Arthur’s swimming hole. And Bi-Polar Bear could, indeed, race quite fast.
In exactly three minutes and fifteen seconds (allowing for the extra weight of one penguin and one snow fox, neither of which had remained still for the entire journey), Bi-Polar Bear and his, well, passengers arrived at Arthur’s swimming hole. Arthur jumped off Bi-Polar Bear, checked that Bi-Polar Bear was still there, looked firmly around him to assure himself that they were where they were supposed to be, took a moment to calm down and start breathing normally, stepped tentatively into the pool to make sure it was still a pool (the way his day was going, one never knew) and slowly entered the water, swimming with increased relaxation as his remaining three minutes and forty-five seconds went by.
Bi-Polar Bear sat down and caught his breath. Amelia sat down not knowing what else to do. She looked at Bi-Polar Bear and felt she ought to say something and said, “Well done”. Bi-Polar Bear looked at Amelia, still panting from the run, and nodded. And they both sat watching the now calm and content Arthur, swimming before his fishing time, and felt calmer themselves.
**************
Over the next few weeks, Bi-Polar Bear never missed his appointment with Arthur the Autistic Penguin as he didn’t really want to upset his friend. He learned a lot about Arthur over that time – Arthur hated when things didn’t go as planned – for example, one day the swimming hole was frozen over and Arthur got very upset indeed until Bi-Polar Bear broke the ice, allowing Arthur to swim. Bi-Polar Bear also learned that Arthur didn’t have conversations or friendship like others, but Bi-Polar Bear was happy to accept this as, well, he wasn’t like others either. Arthur didn’t like small talk – in fact he didn’t talk much at all, but would occasionally answer very specific questions and was quite knowledgeable about the names of constellations of stars on those nights when, as Bi-Polar Bear learned, Arthur liked to lie back and watch the sky. It is safe to say that over this time, Arthur came to depend on Bi-Polar Bear to fix the things that interrupted his plans and Bi-Polar Bear was happy to oblige and enjoyed spending time with the penguin, who didn’t change the way he reacted to Bi-Polar Bear whether Bi-Polar Bear was in one of his over happy moods or one of his deep, thoughtful and seemingly sad moods. Arthur was simply content to let Bi-Polar Bear be as he was. Bi-Polar Bear also learned that Arthur liked yellow and red and hated green, which was fine as there was very little green amongst the ice-bond Arctic.
Arthur didn’t learn anything about Bi-Polar Bear except the fact that Bi-Polar Bear was now part of Arthur’s routine, had learned to ask good questions as opposed to silly questions such as “how do you do?” and that Bi-Polar Bear was good at fixing things when things were not the way they should be. This was possibly as close to friendship as Arthur got, which was not to say he was lonely – friendship was just something he didn’t quite understand. And that is something a lot of friends would be hard to explain, if one took the time to ask them.
Amelia sometimes joined them, as she didn’t have much to do with the other snow foxes. Snow foxes tend to stay by themselves a lot and it didn’t help that Amelia seemed odd, wouldn’t cross cracked ice or step on soft snow and seemed to constantly think that what she did – or didn’t do – would cause the icecaps to melt. Or not. Or something. But Amelia felt relaxed in the company if Bi-Polar Bear and Arthur, who didn’t seem to think she was strange at all, or at least seemed equally strange. All she knew was when she was there, she was not too worried about the icecaps melting and it helped that Bi-Polar Bear carried her over the cracked ice and soft snow when it was in the way of Arthur place to sit, which had now become, it was fair to say, the place to sit for Arthur, Bi-Polar Bear and Amelia. The fact that Bi-Polar Bear was walking on the cracks and soft snow while carrying Amelia didn’t seem to bother Amelia, as long as it wasn’t she who walked on the cracks and soft snow. Bi-Polar Bear’s action quite clearly did not impact upon the ice caps in Amelia’s mind.
Bi-Polar Bear did think it was a little strange that Amelia thought that her actions somehow did impact on the melting ice caps, but as he did not know why the ice caps were melting, he was hardly in a position to question Amelia. Anyway, once she was carried across, she seemed happy enough. And also, when Bi-Polar Bear was in one of his very fast chatting moods, Amelia could almost keep up with him, though she did appear to get nervous the fast she talked and her pitch increased to the level that irritated some huskies who happened to be passing one day when Bi-Polar Bear was very very happy and chatty and Amelia was particularly nervous having only turned around fourteen times the previous night instead of fifteen and was trying to assure Bi-Polar Bear, who wasn’t listening and was talking about fish, that she had merely miscounted and had honestly thought she had turned around fifteen times.
They were, indeed, an odd trio but they seemed to get along fine and seemed to be happy in each other’s company and didn’t really expect any of them to be anything other than the way they were, no matter how strange it seemed to anyone who may have been watching or listening, which is probably a very rude thing to do in any case. But the weeks passed and they sat together and watched Arthur swim and then sometimes joined him fishing, but far enough away that they didn’t interfere with his fishing space and even sometimes spent the night staring at the starry sky, just the way they were.
