February 4th, 2026
Asher wants stories. He does not want to hear stories from books. He wants my wife and I to make up stories extemporaneously. We try to oblige. Often, he asks for a story when one of us is busy. It’s difficult to come up with coherent tale when you are driving on the freeway or cooking supper. So, we do our best and Asher is sometimes dissatisfied with our feeble efforts.
He hit me up for a story this morning just before breakfast. That was poor timing in that we are always in a rush at breakfast. The boy needs to eat, take his vitamins, brush his teeth, and dress within a half hour timeframe. It’s hard to squeeze a story into that schedule. I agreed to give it a try.
Asked him, “What do you want the story to be about?”
He grinned and said, “A penguin!”
“Okay, this penguin…”
“Grandpa, you have to start a story with ‘Once upon a time’.”
“Okay, so, once upon a time this penguin…”
“Grandpa, what was the penguin’s name?”
I made up a name for the penguin. It was wrong. I asked Asher,
“So, what should his name be?”
“Waddle.”
“Okay, so once upon a time, Waddles the Penguin….”
“No, no, no! Not ‘Waddles‘! It’s just ‘Waddle’! That’s what penguins do!”
“Okay, so once upon a time, Waddle the Penguin came from the South Pole to some place warm. He didn’t like it because he was too hot, so he went to a grocery store and snuck into a freezer display case and started eating Cherry Garcia ice cream. Waddle didn’t have a spoon, so it was kind of messy. He had to eat with his flipper. Then a customer came and got freaked out and the customer yelled, ‘I don’t want to buy a penguin! I just want a carton of Cherry Garcia!’. Waddle left the store.”
Asher asked me, “Then what happened?”
“Hmmmm, he walked back to the South Pole.”
“That’s a long way, Grandpa.”
“Yeah, it took him a while. When he got to the South Pole, he looked fo his best friend named Fisher.”
“Why was his friend named Fisher?”
“Because that’s what penguins do. They fish.”
“Oh.”
“Anyway, Waddle gazed around at all the other penguins, but they all looked alike to him. So, he yelled out, ‘Fisher!’, but none of the other penguins answered him. Then he went to the edge of the ice and saw a penguin in the water fishing. Waddle asked him, ‘Are you named Fisher?’, but the penguin in the water said, ‘No, I’m just fishing’. Waddle wandered for a long time, but he finally found his friend, and they were both really happy.”
Asher asked, “That’s it?”
“Yeah.”
He wasn’t satisfied, but it was time for him to eat his oatmeal with strawberries and bananas in it.
He begged me for a new and better story after school. I told him about a man who sailed to the South Pole to sell refrigerators to the Waddle and his penguin friends.
Asher didn’t like that story either.
Frank is Emptiness 